


Narcos: Mexico

by Abreu



Category: Narcos (TV), Narcos: Mexico (TV), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: 80's Music, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Mob, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bittersweet Ending, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Canon Gay Relationship, Cassian Andor-centric, Chirrut Îmwe is a Little Shit, Cocaine, Comfort No Hurt, Crimes & Criminals, Dom Cassian (ACoTaR), Drinking Games, Drug Addiction, Drunk Dancing, Drunk Sex, Drunken Flirting, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Force-Sensitive Jyn Erso, Gay Panic, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Heavy Drinking, Human K-2SO, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Killing, M/M, Married Chirrut Îmwe/Baze Malbus, Methamphetamine, Mexican Character, Mexico, Murder, Narcos - Freeform, Oral Sex, Organized Crime, Original Character(s), POV Cassian Andor, Rough Sex, Sighted Chirrut Îmwe, Smoking, Underage Drinking, Underage Rape/Non-con, Underage Smoking, Unhappy Ending, Unresolved Sexual Tension, dea
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2020-11-08 13:06:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20835953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abreu/pseuds/Abreu
Summary: History had never been kind to men like him. History has butchered his kind and thrown them into the wolves’s mouth. History had destroyed men like him.But he didn’t need History’s pity. He didn’t need History to remember his as a saint nor a good man. He didn’t need History to be kind to him. He didn’t expect it to be.Cassian Andor knew what happened to men like him. He would be praised, he would be loved but he would also be wanted and feared. People would say his name in controversy. And he didn’t mind that.History would know his name. History would know his actions. History would —like it or not—remember him as the biggest trafficker that had ever been born in Mexico.(Or, a remake of a story I made that follows Narcos: Mexico but with Jyn and Cassian falling in love and fucking shit up)





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, fine, fine. I did change the name and the summary but BUT otherwise, this should be actually have the same essence. (Well, except I changed the name of one character but half of you don’t even know this is a remake so it’s fine). NOW ARE YOU GUYS READY???

**Guadalajara, Jalisco**

**8th February, 1985**

**8:45 AM**

So this was how it felt like, the end, the end that he used to fantasize about in the dark of the nights, the one that made him begin this whole operation, the one he had been sure to happen one day. The day had finally come and this was how it felt like, anger, followed by emptiness and then fear. And that was new, Cassian Andor was afraid, but afraid of what? He wasn’t sure of it. The end had come, the goddamn end had come. And after all, it wasn’t his fault, nor the fault of his partners, it was the fault of their arrogance and feeling of superiority. 

He wanted to scream, he wanted to get up from his seat, scream, break every single thing he had, shout in anger, curse God, curse the fucking gringos and most of all, curse himself. But all he did was just slummed into one of the chairs in his office, in shock, thinking of something, a way to say ‘this is not the end’ but it could very well be. There was one law in their business, and that was to never fuck with the Americans. And they just broke it. This was very well the goddamn end, and Cassian, Cassian Andor the man who supposedly knew everything and had already planned everything for the day that it would be the end, didn’t know how to act, he didn’t think it would come this fast.

Oh, the fucking irony of it wasn’t lost to Cassian. 

“Cassian? Did you even hear me?” The rough and harsh voice of Baze Malbus was heard in his brain. 

As the years went by, Cassian found himself going to Baze for more advice, he understood what had to be done, he understood that you had to change with the business, and he was a good friend. He found himself searching for something in his head to answer his friend, but he could not think of anything. 

“I heard you,” he finally said, how original of him. “Kes, Kes Dameron has kidnapped a DEA agent.” 

“Si los gringos se enteran de esto, ya nos jodieron la cosa,” Baze replied, his voice sounding of desperation and anger. The fifty-five years old shared the same feeling as Cassian, who found some comfort in that, but not enough.

_If the Americans find out about this, they will fuck us up.  
_

God, he knew. If they found out one of their agents has been kidnapped and was now being tortured by them, well, he wasn’t even sure what they would do. But all he built would’ve been for nothing. He was done. And he couldn’t just give him back, by now he had been asked dozens of names — politicians’s names who were linked with their business — if he let him out, the Americans and their government would fuck them up. 

He was dead anyways. Now it was only a matter of time. 

“What do we do?” Baze sat in the chair in front of him, a glass of tequila in his hand and a cigarette hanging from his mouth. 

“Can I confess something to you, Baze? I don’t know,” the famous innovator Cassian Andor admitted.  


Baze looked at him, disappointment wasn’t anywhere in his face. He did look alarmed and maybe a little angry, but disappointed never. He shrugged and took a drink out of his glass. It was the face of a man who knew that, he knew that Cassian didn’t know. And he was ready to accept the truth. It was the end.

“I don’t know,” he repeated. “I’ve planned everything, since how we get the plazas to act to how to make our government cooperate. But—but this? I never expected something like this to happen! It wasn’t suppose to happen, we were suppose to move on from the incident, not kidnap an American!”

Baze nodded in agreement, taking a drag out of his cigarette and putting the drink down. He looked thoughtfully at the wall in front of him, he kept nodding, to help himself think. Then, he looked at the thirty-nine years old man in front of him.

“You did good, capitán, you did good. We had a good thing going on here, but we became too ambitious, it was bound to happen anyways. Now, the only thing that matters it’s that we control the situation and fast, maybe we can still salvage this thing.”

Cassian scoffed. “¿Pues, cómo le vamos a hacer? Esto nunca lo predijimos, nunca lo planeamos ¡Todos pensamos que nadie era tan estúpido cómo para hacer esto!”

_Well, how are we going to do that? We never predicted this, we never planned for something like this. We all thought no one was stupid enough to do something like this!_

“Your brother, he can help us out. Try to keep the DEA off our scent for a few days, maybe even weeks. He can buy us some time. And we need that time, to think, to organize ourselves. Just because one of us fucked up doesn’t mean everyone of us will fall. We might have a chance to stay in the game.” 

Cassian looked at Baze, then he nodded. That could work, it wouldn’t be much, it wouldn’t be what they wanted but it could be what they needed. His brother could hold the Americans for a certain amount of time, giving them excuses and calling it priorities. He would become vulnerable, that was given, he would run a great risk by doing it, if they caught him, they would see his link to the cartel and then, most probably, he would be arrested for aiding the kidnapping of a DEA agent. He could lose his life if he bought them time. And Cassian didn’t want to lose anyone he cared about. 

“Who gave the order, do you know?”

Baze shrugged again, he usually did that, he always shrugged to answer a question. He wasn’t a man of a lot of words. “Kay, he and the DFS gave the order to kidnap the American, out of anger from what they did to him and his business, and probably to fuck us in his way.” 

A moment of silence, a light moment of silence. Bass knew his partner, his friend was coming with a plan, he always did. Ever since the beginning he had a plan for mostly everything, one that in the long run would benefit everyone in the organization but nowadays, people didn’t want the results in the long run, they wanted them now, and that made some serious complications to him. 

“Do you remember when I came to your house to talk to you about the new plaza system? Now that we had the political pull to smuggle Colombian coke into the country?”  


Baze nodded as he exhaled one final drag out of his cigarette and left the rest in the ashtray. 

Cassian shifted in his seat, now the lines of his face were becoming clearer, the few gray hairs he managed to miss while bleaching his hair, coming out in the light and his hand in his tight. He was about to tell something really important yet controversial. “Kay gave us the best thing ever. He made his seedless weed which became heaven on earth for us, and I’ll be forever grateful of that. Thanks to him, this organization had stood for years now. He has given everything to us.” 

To Baze, Kay was an expense he could afford to lose, as the years went by, Kay became more uncontrollable, less predictable and much more unstable, he became too arrogant, too cocky for his own good. The organization had already lost too much trying to clean his messes. For Baze, Kay was a good friend, one that did give them everything he had, and who thanks to his weed made them the richest people in all Mexico. But his services were no longer needed since a few years back, and trying to keep him in the organization was more work than just dumping him. 

He was no longer needed. He had become expendable. But it didn’t mean that they wanted to betray him. Or at least, not Cassian.

“That dumbass has given us everything, that’s true,” he agreed. “We  _owned_ him a lot, but so does he.”

Cassian sighed. He ran his left hand through his hair, looking at the watch pressed against the skin of his right hand. Could he truly betray Kay like that? Give him to the Americans as a distraction for the meantime? To buy them time? Loyalties in the business were a tricky thing. When the DEA became involved, some people would double-cross each other to save their skin. Could Cassian do that to Kay? He had some good arguments to back that decision. It would the most logical, the one that made sense the most. Kay had gave the order, Kay had thought with his heart instead of his head.

It was all but illogical for Cassian to betray him. His friend had brought that to himself, disobeying every order that Cassian had given, making chaos and wrecking havoc everywhere he went. Cassian and Baze had to deal with his tantrums and that costed much for the organization. If Cassian should think of all this too logical, in the pragmatic approach, then of course it would be logical and hell, even justified for him to betray Kay. Give him to the Americans. Call his brother, tell him to surrender Kay. Tell him that someone else snitched, making him pay for his actions.

But in the end, Kay would snitch on Cassian and Baze. He would spill all the organization’s information. He would do it because everyone does. Usually people threw their morals out the window when faced with a threat too dangerous for them to handle. Cassian would just be throwing a good friend —maybe even his brother—to the lion’s den just to buy himself some time that might not even be enough. It would never be enough. This had started something and Cassian wasn’t sure what it was. But Kay’s orders had definitely started something by ending another. And it frightened Cassian to know which one was the beginning and the end.

Maybe he could make a deal with his partners, the ones up high could hold some kind of power for him. He could make a deal, tell them —maybe even before beg them—to give him some more time. It would never be enough, he knew and they would surely know that but just enough for him do deal with everything. In the best case scenario, he would walk free from the consequences that troubled him since he started the journey. Maybe he could make a deal not for him but for his son, whom probably was as confused as Cassian, maybe he could save his son from the consequences that he had given himself.

Or he could betray Kay. But even a cold-blooded killer like Cassian, one that lost everything and had nothing in the end, would not do such dishonorable thing.

“We just need to lay down for a while, stay down, make sure business runs as usual. No one needs to panic, no one has to panic. I’m going to solve this. As for now, we go as usual. We don’t make any noise and we sure as Hell don’t try to make the DEA more suspicious. I’m going to contact some of my partners in Mexico City and I’m going to solve this problem,” he said after a long silence.

Baze scoffed. “You truly think this will go with a deal? Those snakes will give you to the Americans to save themselves. This is a whole ‘nother shit that we don’t know how to react and forgive me, but making deals won’t help our situation.”

Undignified, Cassian replied to Baze’s remark. He was running out of ideas as the clock ticked. “Pues que quieres que haga ¿traicionar a Kay? Tenemos que mantener el negocio jalando, tenemos que planear nuestros pasos muy meticulosamente y la única solución que le veo a esto es esperar a que el gobierno reaccione.”

_Well, what do you want me to do, Baze? You want me to betray Kay? We have to keep the business going, we have to plan very meticulously what we going to do next. And the only solution I have for this, it’s to wait for the government to do something._

“Just...” Baze started, he sighed and looked at his friend. “Watch your back, maybe you can find a solution but it will cost you very much.” 

With those words, he took one final drink out of his glass and got up, headed to the door. 

Cassian sighed as he looked at the man leaving. “I can’t betray Kay, Baze. He’s family. I can’t just hand him over the feds. He’s my family, and he’s your friend.”

Baze stopped dead in his tracks, turned to face Cassian, and gave an understanding nod. “I know, and neither will I. And I also know you’re gonna make him ‘disappear’ for a while, I’m just worried how much is that gonna cost you, and us.” 

“I’ll find a solution, I’m going to solve this. I always do.”

“It might be too late for any bureaucracy, capitán, we need to leave. Let your brother handle the Americans for a few days, just enough to get your things in order, and then leave. If you stay here and try to find a solution, it won’t go well,” Baze said, an air of defeat but pride in his tone. “We did good, now it’s time to retire. This was always the goal.” 

Cassian shook his head. “No, I won’t let my life’s work to fall just like that. I know I can still do something, and I will find a solution, it’s not too late. If you want to leave for a while, do so, take Chirrut and go to Puerto Vallarta but I swear on my life, I promise you, I will find a solution to this. And I never break my promises.”

Baze sighed, his hand in the door’s handle. “I know, Cassian. But this might be the  _one_ promise you cannot keep.” And with that, he left the room. 

Cassian couldn’t help but agree with Baze, maybe this was his time, the organization had run down. But if he was going down, he would go down with a fight. The DEA wouldn’t catch the Boss of Bosses waiting for them, they would find him fighting for his freedom. 

* * *

**8th of February, 1985**

**12:57 PM**

Believe it or not, Salvador “Chava” Andor (he was nicknamed also Tenoch because of his middle name) used to be an honest cop, or at least tried to be one. If you took a look at his career, you would find it somewhat weird, he was born in a town called Culiacán, in Sinaloa and in 1964, when he was 17, he left to Guadalajara where he became a state police officer. He only lasted three years in the MFPJ before his superior officer recommended him to the DFS where he quickly demonstrated passion, determination and the ambition that made a good and agile agent. He quickly rose through the ranks until taking the title of Commander and being helpful to the Director of the DFS.

Chava was born into a poor couple of farmers whom later became weed traffickers that surely didn’t want the same future for their children. His parents had tried to shield them from that life but unable to make more than a few cents, they made the decision to grow weed which Chava learned how to care and grow in the field. His older brother Cassian was the one that learned the quickest, although a disaster in the field, he learned to make friends with the ones that knew. Making the whole circle of traffickers that knew each other and working their childhood for Galen Erso.

Chava, just like his brother, had tried to steer away from that type of lifestyle when entering to the MFJP but unable to make a living when all that Guadalajara had to offer for an honest cop was a life full of threats and bullying, he decided to put his hands and his head at work. His whole childhood had been spent with traffickers and he knew them all. He decided to make that information valuable. And the Director quickly noticed that, and although he disliked Chava heavily for his involvement in the trafficking business, he did enjoy the profits that gave him in the end.

And with one quick snap of fingers, Chava became a valuable piece in the trafficking business. He was the bridge between the law and the traffickers. Whoever wished to make business with the DFS, whoever wanted to buy the cops in the Guadalajara and whoever wished to have the protection of the great blue badge needed to see Chava. Who would become the manager, the one that represented the DFS, the one in charge of half of the trafficker’s operations. It worked fine for him. He did have some shame in becoming corrupt but not more than the guy next to him.

The best thing was the DEA never suspected him of corruption. That would be thanks to Chava’s cunning brain, in paper, he never had any kind of true parentage linked between him and Cassian. He had been specifically careful to make sure his name was Salvador Nava and just told the DEA he was Cassian’s half brother (which was a total lie) when he saw himself cornered without escape. But a pity story convinced them he was on their side.

His brother (to the DEA half-brother) was the personal bodyguard of the governor of Sinaloa, Leopoldo Sánchez Celis, his political protector. Thanks to that experience, he believed himself to be a politician (regards of being near one for so much goddamn time), he thought he could be one (which he could damn well could’ve been) thanks to his ability of telling you what you wanted to hear. His brother had an idea and the governor pulled some strings and helped him achieve it. That simple. 

Chava wasn’t as ambitious as his brother (his ambitious did grow as the business did, but never to an extreme), he didn’t see himself in the top of a pyramid of traffickers, he didn’t see himself in a suit, in a office signing paperwork. He saw himself getting rich, helping who paid him, and he saw himself taking advantage of the corruption that the government had. He was a man of words, maybe like his brother, he could tell you what you wanted to hear and he wasn’t afraid of getting his hands dirty. He got the job done. Which made him a great asset to whoever wanted.

But everything golden has its end, and Chava knew it was the end. Or at least, the end of someone. If it was him, or if it was his brother, he did not know. What always differenced him from his brother was that Chava was rather a follower, he liked to have orders, like that if anything went south, he could have someone to blame, while Cassian was a leader, one who had been born to lead, one that couldn’t blame anyone but himself if things went south. And God, things had gone south. 

Maybe another thing that differenced his brother and him was his inability to dress in nicer clothes. While his brother always wore something tailor made suit with materials exported from Italy (he loved to have Italian clothes), leather shoes that costed more than a house, multiple watches, golden and some custom made and very expensive sunglasses. Chava didn’t do that, maybe it was because he was still in the field, and couldn’t afford to have nicer clothes, maybe it was because he never liked nicer clothes. He wore the same every day, some blue ragged jeans, a gray shirt and a leather jacket with some  Nike shoes. 

He never dared to use shirts without sleeves thanks to the horrible scars that marked the skin of his right forearm. Most people could think that it was out of depression (which he said as a lie to fill the role of an alcoholic asshole) and would usually stared at it, thinking ‘this guy needs serious help’ and pitying him. It wasn’t the case at all, long ago (well, not so long ago maybe—nope, it was twelve years ago), he decided to have a tattoo. Although he regretted the decision a few months afterwards. 

With full desperation and hate for the stupid tattoo, he grabbed a piece of pumice he found in an abandoned bathroom (that was another story all together) and just began scratching himself to take that stupid tattoo off (he was also a little bit drunk (again with the profile of the alcoholic)), when that didn’t work, he found himself with a knife and trying to cut the pieces of the tattoo off his skin. It ended with a bloody mess and a deadly loss of blood. Which was now just a hundred of red lines which look horrible and gory. 

The tattoo prevailed just for his luck. 

Now, he was caressing the scars while he waited to be called, waited for everything to go to Hell. It had been twenty-four hours since Kes Dameron, Kay Tuesso, Han Solo kidnapped an American (a fucking DEA agent, can you believe it?) and left it in an old house property of him. He was sure that by now, his family (did he have a family? Did he have a wife? A son? A daughter? He never asked) knew that something was wrong and would be asking questions. But thanks to God, bureaucracy moved at its own pace and the  gringos were never loved in Mexico. It would take ages for them to start an investigation, and he would help delay it further. 

Still, a fucking call from them, meant bad business.

That’s why when his office phone began to ring, he had to suppress a jump. He wasn’t like this all the time, he wasn’t this wimpy asshole who was afraid of the gringos. He was only thinking about the consequences that would bring that decision to the business. It was the thought of how much time he could buy his brother and nephew until his own clock run out. Without wasting a second (well, he might’ve answered after a few seconds to not look desperate), he took the phone and placed it next to his ear and with a clear and confident voice, he answered.

“¿Bueno? Habla Comandante Nava.” 

_This is Commander Nava._

“Something wrong happened,” the other line muttered. He recognize the voice very well, it was a voice he had heard for the last five years. The voice of DEA informant Jyn Erso, a complicated informant, that is. She held back some information to the DEA for the benefit of Chava’s brother yet she still fought against them. She and he had a few casual flings in the past and there was a time when Chava fell in love with her. 

But his brother did as well, and it would be foolish for him to compete against the man who could kill him with a snap of his fingers. Jyn Erso was the only informant that had made something resembling to a friendship with Cassian and Chava. The DFS commander tried many times to stop her progress, going out his way to make sure she didn’t have any compromising information about his brother while trying to keep his cover. Their relationship (can you call that some casual flings in a cheap hotel somewhere or in the back of his car?) was complicated.

The Jyn Erso that Cassian knew, was less complicated and more simple, or straight forward. Chava didn’t know who he had fell in love long ago, and didn’t want to understand that when they were this deep. 

“What happened?” 

“Bodhi hasn’t come home since yesterday’s morning. Luke affirmed that he didn’t make it to lunch,” she spoke, sadness, frustration and fear could be heard from her voice. 

Bodhi Rook. He probably didn’t deserve such fate, maybe he truly didn’t know anything, or maybe he was loyal to the gringos and he wasn’t going to tell anything to them. Chava met him various times, but he didn’t know anything about the DEA agent. And maybe he didn’t deserve what was happening to him.

“Where was he last seen, Erso? Maybe he decided to go to his house or something like that, have you spoken to your embassy?” Chava couldn’t do much if the embassy of the United States didn’t want him to much. And maybe they didn’t care about this guy, this México-born man who left his country after horrible incidents. Maybe no one cared about Bodhi Rook. 

“They don’t want to help us, they say the same as you. He might have gotten home or something like that. But I know him, Luke knows him, he wouldn’t done something like that. We firmly believe that the cártel had something to do with this.” 

He laughed, not because he thought it was funny, but because he had to sell the lie that it was funny.  _Be cocky, be arrogant, be so incredible naive that you wouldn’t believe that anyone in the cártel could be that stupid_ _._ “I don’t think so, Jyn. They are no dumbasses, they know that the gringos are off limits. If my brother was in this, I’m pretty sure I would’ve been kidnapped as well, you know I helped with that mission. He’s probably in his house or visited his friend’s and forgot to check in. If he doesn’t come back in twelve hours, check with your country again and then call me back.”

“Are you seriously going to let me with that bullshit?” Her voice sounded disappointed, almost like he had betrayed her. Maybe she believed he was a superhero who could fuck all the laws of his country for the greater good, maybe she had this weird image in her head about who Salvador Nava was. She was probably disappointed when her bubble exploded to leave a cold and harsh reality. He wasn’t the hero of her story. He was no one’s hero.

He sighed, out of pity for himself, out of anger, out sadness. Sheer sadness was what he felt now. Called it intuition but he knew something was going to end, someone was going to die, and something was going to begin. And it would be big. 

“I’m sorry, Jyn. But you know that without the government support, I can’t do much. My hands are already tied by my superiors, they suspect of me, and my brother might as well kidnap me soon. I’ll try my best.” 

He hang up before she could say anything else. He didn’t have any more lies to feed her. Desperate times brings the most desperate version of everyone. He leaned in his chair, looking at his office. Everything they built, everything was going to fall, and where would he be when it did? Dead? Or alive? He massaged his temples as he went over everything again. 

The Americans would find out. He couldn’t protect his brother and nephew from everything that would come his way. Very quietly, he started praying to Jesús Malverde for help. 

* * *

**8th of February, 1985**

**6:12 PM**

Cassian didn’t want to know which house they kept the American in, he didn’t want to know which street, he didn’t want to see the color of the paint in the house, he didn’t want to know more than he did. But he didn’t let his panic, that human instinct that told him to flee, told him to make a deal with whoever could, get in the way of business. It had been a crazy day, he had been getting updates about the situation with the American, he pulled some big strings to take Kay out of the country, to Perú, a place where no one could look. Chava had been kind to him, delaying every operation the DEA had, pulling the strings of bureaucracy in his favor but from his call a few hours ago, good things weren’t going to stay inside for long. 

The house where they were keeping the agent was property of his brother, a big house, with multiple rooms and sheds. It had been once the property of the president’s brother but Chava won it in a game of poker. The street was Lope de Vega, in a good neighborhood. The number was 881. Costly parties and big egos had once attained the house, which had been fairly abandoned now, just pulled out for this type of work. The house was painted orange, an orange which was now dying. It was next to an university and had a lot of terrain. It had a pool. It had the facade of being a normal house.

How wrong that description was. 

He was welcomed by Solo, Kes and his own brother. He looked worse than ever, but maybe that was just because he was always in a worse shape than he was. He was smoking like crazy when Cassian came. Worry lines all over his face, frowning as he took a drag. He was a year younger than him but his hair was half gray by now. The doctors said it was genetics, his father had achieved gray hair at the age of 43. Chava’s beard was grayish, he probably bleached for a time and was now wearing off. He told him some stuff but nothing important. That’s why he agree to meet with the kidnapped, have a talk with him, try to see if he could break him. 

The room where they kept him was the boiler room. Tables full of tools, bloody tools,the floor itself was wet with what looked like piss, puke and blood. The smell was of a corpse rotting. He saw how the man in charge of the interrogation (it was torture, but he had decided to use the other less threatening term) was desperately trying to wipe the blood, mucus, and puke off his face and shirt. But that just made everything much worse, now Cassian saw what damage had been done. He wanted to kill Kay in that moment, he wanted to grab a phone and just tell the DFS where he was. This was worse than he imagined.

Of course, all those rushing thoughts were underneath that perfectly calmed facade. This poker face which seemed unfazed by the problem they were in, an expression that had everything under control, everything resolved when in reality, he was getting fucked. 

Bodhi Rook was no longer afraid, he was in pain (major pain—immense pain) but he was no longer afraid. He held hope he could live this one, that maybe by repeating the same thing all over again, they would get into their thick skull that he didn’t know anything and maybe let him go, he held hope that the DEA—Luke was searching for him and would burst open that gate to save him. He held hope even if it seemed stupidly wrong. 

Cassian leaned on the doorframe, his hands the pockets of his trousers, his navy blue suit wrinkled by his hands. He looked at the man in front of him in self-absorbed thought. Bodhi Rook looked very bad, his white shirt was soaked in red, fiery blood. His face had been beaten up badly, he couldn’t even open his left eye, an swelling had taken half of his face which was covered in sweat and blood. His hair was wet as well, lips all blue and dried blood all over his body. Broken fingers, broken nose, broken spirit. He licked his lips before speaking. 

“I know you.”

Bodhi looked up, and even doing that seemed to bring him great amount of pain. That’s why he nodded slightly and faintly to the cold, calculated and accented Spanish he heard. 

“Your partner—is that what he is? Your partner? He yelled at me in the street once, you were trying to get him to back off,” Cassian said, getting away from the doorframe enough to close the door. He didn’t take his eyes of the man. 

“Yeah.” 

Cassian rolled his eyes at the straightforwardness of Bodhi, that was the first sign of emotion he showed but quickly went back to that stone cold face, he was studying him, trying to see his weaknesses but Bodhi wasn’t showing any, and if he did, Cassian couldn’t see them from the injuries. 

“You’re the man who killed Galen,” Bodhi’s hoarse voice spoke. His tone was tired and hanging, but still strong. “Aren’t you?”

Cassian nodded, this was a fair game, a question for a question. “Ey, I was the man who killed Galen Erso. But that was long time ago, and you weren’t there.” 

Bodhi’s head went back to looking at his shoes. Cassian frowned, it seemed Bodhi Rook had known Galen Erso (a horrible farmer but great chemist) and for the reaction he gotten, he knew him personally. But Erso had been dead for a long time, he wasn’t going to press the issue. 

“Tell me,  _Bodhi,_ how long have you been on me?” 

He looked up again. He stayed quiet for a few seconds before answering. “A long time now, not enough.”

Cassian scoffed. He glanced at the door. “Do you recognize any of those men? The ones that have been treating you?” 

Now it was Bodhi’s turn to scoff. He wasn’t afraid anymore, he held hope, stupid and naive hope, but fear wasn’t in his list. “Your brother, Chava. The others I recognize from photos the DEA has taken in this past years.”

A moment of silence, one that felt like an eternity before Bodhi spoke again, now desperation, frustration and exasperation full in his plead. 

“I’ve told them everything I know,” the one eye that was still functional looked at Cassian with tiredness, sadness but also defiance. “I don’t know anything that you have asked me. I am only thirty-four, and I have a family. Please.”

Cassian’s answer to that was quick and sharp. “Then why are you here, getting in other’s businesses?” His head titled to the side, his stone cold face showing an ounce of annoyance. “This is not your country.” 

Bodhi shook his head, which made him inhale a sharp bit of air as it hurt. “I was born in Badiraguato, in Sinaloa. Same as you. I am every ounce of Mexican as you.” 

Cassian’s annoyance was replaced by a humorless laugh. He was leaning on the wall next to the door, his hands still in his pockets. “I think we both know you’re smart enough to not believe that.” 

Bodhi shrugged. 

“Me siguen preguntando sobre gente de la Ciudad de México. Nombres de políticos que yo no sé nada. Me siguen preguntando sobre nombres importantes liados a tu negocio. Me interrogan sobre tus socios en el gobierno.”

_They keep asking me about people in Mexico City. Names of politicians I do not know anything of. They keep asking me about important names linked to your business. Your partners in the government_ _._

The smug smirk that went with the information was enough to make Cassian’s poker face fall for a few moments. The _pocho_ was smarter than he thought, taking him by surprise with that. His worst fears being confirmed, he now knew too much, if they got him back to his home, he would rat them out. This was much worse than he thought. 

But his poker face came back after those small seconds. 

“And? What have you been answering them?” 

“I don’t know anything about what they keep asking me. I’ve been telling them that for the past 24 hours!”

Cassian didn’t say anything, finally getting off the dirty wall, he walked towards the sink where all the dirty and bloody tools laid down. He opened the faucet and threw cold water to his face. The whole action took in total two minutes, which he later spend a few more by passing a towel over his face. 

“I used to be just like you,” he spoke, as he turned and leaned on the wall again. “I had a house, I had a job, I had bills to pay, I had debts, and I  had a family.” The emphasis on ‘_had_’ was quick and sharp on that last sentence.

“I was once a cop,” he continued, looking at Bodhi with the same poker face, but his tone was less cold and more warm. He then proceeded to chuckle, as if something he thought was funny enough for that. “They say that money and power can’t buy you happiness, don’t they?” 

Bodhi nodded again. 

Cassian gave him a bittersweet smile. He took of a hand off his pocket and revealed a cigarette pack, he took one out and searched for his lighter. When he found it, he lit the stick up and took a long drag. “This shit helps me with the anxiety, I’ve been getting more of that in this past few years,” another humorless or sarcastic chuckle. “Funny, because when I didn’t have anything, I used to sleep like a baby, no nightmares, no worries. And now, now that I have everything, I can barely close my eyes.”

That’s when he grabbed a chair, his eyes still on the poor beaten face of Bodhi Rook, the cigarette hanging from his mouth and the smoke coming out of his nose. He placed the chair right in front of him. He sat down and looked specifically close to him. “But do you know how I got where I am? When I look at something I don't see it for what it is. I see it for what it could be. When I start something I see how it ends.” 

Bodhi scoffed again, but his didn’t show any defiance. “I just want to go home, I just want this to end.”

What he really wanted to say was: “But this isn’t something you started, this is something one of your partners did and now you got stuck cleaning his mess.”

“Okay. Tell them everything they want to know. You hear me? Everything. Then you'll go home. That's how this ends.” There was something new in his tone of voice, something desperate, frustrated. He spoke with a hard, sharp and quick voice but there was something beneath it that looked like he was desperate enough to believe a lie.

“You had a family?” 

Cassian stopped. Bodhi knew he was risking much with that question, but what can they do to him? Kill him? That would be an upgrade from what he was going on through right now. And Bodhi needed to know, to keep him talking in case Luke came for him. Cassian stood still, only the small rise of his shoulders and the smoke of the cigarette giving Bodhi the impression he was still alive. 

“Yes, I had a family.” 

He turned around, the frown that he wore for all his days getting bigger and bigger every second. But now, even with this big question, his frown seemed to disappear for a minute, he took the cigarette out of his mouth and rested it in his hand, letting the ash fall in the concrete floor. He looked deeply in the eye of Bodhi, the impression of pain and misery great in him, Bodhi wanted to smile, say something, but suddenly found himself unable to form a word. 

The big, intimidating businessman walked to the chair again, sitting down one more time. “Yes, I had a family once. Maybe not the same family than you but a family nonetheless,” he spoke, his accentuated Spanish getting softer.

“I was seventeen when I met her. She was my first wife,” he stopped, then chuckled as he shook his head. “She was my  _only_ wife, I never remarried afterwards.” 

Bodhi nodded. Cassian continued. 

“She knew my past, the trafficking business that ran in my blood even if I was a cop. She decided to ignore it for a while, but as my dreams grew, as my goals grew, as my ambitions became bigger and bigger, she found herself disliking them every single day. We fought constantly, always the same reason, she thought I was getting too far, too deep in the dark side of the law. But she stayed, she stayed.” 

Bodhi found the words again. “And?”

“And then she left me, she decided that being the wife of a trafficker was too much for her. She threw her wedding ring at me and I never saw her again. A few years ago I learned she was dead.”

“And your son?” The weak voice of Bodhi surprised Cassian.

Bodhi would admit that seeing the stupefaction, pure horror and confusion in Cassian’s face was worth the cliché story. The DEA didn’t know much about Cassian’s life, they didn’t know much about his family. Bodhi suspected the trafficker cared too much for his son that he tried to shield him as much as possible about the life he lived. It would be a hard hit and a promise that Bodhi delivered when he asked about his son. The DEA knew about his son, about Jero. They would use him against Cassian.

“Let me tell you one more time,” the harsh and consistent tone of voice that Cassian had led the interrogation came back, his emotions all back in check, even if he was biting his lip at that new information. “If you want all this to end, tell those men everything they ask you. And then, we can both go home to our families.”

“How about you let me help you?”

“Help _me_?”

Bodhi glanced towards the door, where two bodyguards. He speculated that other more important people were outside was well. “ When they flip on you, your brother and your son, you’re too  smart not to see that.  You're not calling the shots here.”

Cassian’s poker face remained untouched but Bodhi swore he could see how the muscles of his neck tensed at those words.

“If you want to help me, tell this men—”

“—all they wanna know,” Bodhi ended the phrase with an air of annoyance and disappointment. But then, he jerked his head forward, to try to see Cassian Andor better. For years now, he had tried to make the son of a bitch pay for all he did. The DEA had worked endlessly to put him behind bars and now, he just stood a few meters in front of him.

Cassian licked his lips. “Exactly. That’s how this ends.”

Bodhi sighed with a defeating air. The hope had run out. The conversation had lasted too long and the window had closed. Now it was time to face the bitter, unfair and harsh truth. Not only him. But Cassian. Bodhi had been afraid most of his life and had nightmares about what would happen when he would meet his demise. Now, he didn’t feel as much fear as he expected when he would be face to face against the biggest trafficker in Mexico.  


He took all the courage left, all the fight left in him, and smiled towards the subject. He had done enough, it was okay. It was time to let fate run its course. Although he would be lying if he didn’t admit he would miss greatly Luke and Jyn. Life hadn’t been kind to Bodhi Rook. But History wouldn’t be kind to Cassian Andor.

“No, it's not,” he spoke, a sad and poignant smile in his face. “I'm already dead. We both know that. I won't survive this.”

Cassian remained silent, only taking a drag out of the cigarette, as Rook spoke.

“But know what else? Neither will you.”

That’s when Bodhi started laughing. Between his laughs, he started to cough blood, staining Cassian’s hands and beard with his blood but he could care less by now. After a few seconds of uncontrollable laughing, he regained himself and took a long breath before continuing.  “You have no idea what's coming at you. What you started, whether you like it or not. Everything you've worked for, whatever dream you had, it's over.”

And to give him the proper goodbye Cassian Andor deserved, he spoke the next words in English hoping to eat the thoughts of a man so despicable as the devil himself. “_You fucked up, man_.”

Cassian Andor nodded, understanding the threat that Bodhi Rook had just made. He stood up, without a word, he grabbed the chair and pushed it aside. Giving one last look to Bodhi, he threw the remaining of the cigarette to the ground as he stepped on it. He walked towards the door, opened it and gave a slight nod to the bodyguards before disappearing through the hallway. What few Bodhi Rook saw of Cassian Andor was his hand twitching from the anxiety.  


Bodhi Rook died in pain, he died in total agony spilling hundreds of secrets of the DEA trying to get the inhuman torturers to kill him already. But a secret he took to the grave was Jyn Erso. And in the last moments of consciousness, in the cold and solitary room where he was destined to die alone, he found ironically funny how Cassian Andor would fall. He didn’t expect that he, a small Sinaloan and anxious, agent would become the fatal blow for such big trafficker.

No one was with him when he died and he died in pain and agony indeed. But it did not last long. 

* * *

**8th February, 1985**

**11:23 PM**

Cassian Andor was still awake but instead of being in his office, writing checks and stuff like that. He was in his living room, the living room of that immense mansion. The suit wrinkled by how long he had been wearing it, his hair disheveled, a bottle of liquor in his hand and staring at the fireplace contemplating all his life’s work. Strangely, as he sat in the total darkness with only the fire of the chimney illuminating his face, he could not feel more relaxed. He was probably drunk and his brain was trying too hard to find an answer —a solution—to the problem that plagued his mind.

He thought of Jyn and how would that affect her. And while thinking of Jyn, he thought of Galen. As far as he knew, his daughter didn’t have the minor idea that it was he who ended the life of the chemist/boss for what it seemed so long ago. He thought about when Galen told him to get out the business, to find something better, he remembered bitterly how he followed his advice and tried a career in a true finance major. Only to be brought back (and abruptly) to the trafficking business.

He thought about his parents, his mother had been dead for years now but his father was still alive. Probably taking care of his small weed field back in Sinaloa. He wasn’t proud of what his sons had become but could not call him out, as it was him who started it all. He wondered if one those days he would have to flee Guadalajara to go back to Sinaloa, to go back to hiding from the men in suits. Cassian chuckled bitterly, letting one night be a night of utter weakness and failure.

His mind replayed the conversation with Bodhi Rook in an endlessly loop. The words staggering his head like hammers. He would admit that the guy had the guts to tell him what he thought in front of his face. That was a brave thing to do. And Cassian almost scoffed, for cliché endings were too common and usually stomped hard on the ground. Bodhi Rook was set to fail ever since the beginning, everyone who tried to stop the unbreakable system that Cassian cooperated with, was set to fail since the beginning.

Cassian didn’t feel sorry for ending his life. Even if it did turn out he did not know anything more than what Chava already knew. The price of war was high but it didn’t matter to Cassian as long as it kept him away from the dogs of war.

What did Shakespeare said once?

_Cry 'Havoc!' said he who fought chaos with chaos and let slip the dogs of war._

Right. Cassian had learned that back in secondary, he guessed. Peculiar how he remembered that specific quote in that exact moment without remembering the context truly.

He took another drink from the bottle.

Ah! Now he remembered. It had been one those plays that Shakespeare wrote about Julius Caesar. If Cassian’s drunk mind didn’t fail him, it had been Marc Anthony the one who said those words after the assassination of the first Emperor of the Roman Empire. The great and vast Roman Empire that even centuries after it’s collapsed, was still veneered like the greatest Empire ever existing. Cassian chuckled. Ironic as well how he remembered such words in such dire situation.

_Cry 'Havoc!' said he who fought chaos with chaos and let slip the dogs of war._

The Americans would react, not now, not yet but soon. They would react and they would try to take everything that Cassian loved and make him rot in a cell (which he surely as Hell deserved). Even his partners would flip on him, they would betray him just to save their skins. Their profits. Their honor. Their freedom.

_Cry 'Havoc!' said he who fought chaos with chaos and let slip the dogs of war._

Cassian took another chug out of the bottle. It was late at night yet not too late. And the great Boss of Bosses instead of planning ahead, instead of looking or making the opportunities, he was getting drunk while drowning in self-pity. Such failure. But it would end like that. He was sure of that. Fuck, yes, he could self-pity for the next five minutes, he had the right to that but he would go out without a fight. Bodhi Rook has claimed that he had done the biggest mistake of his life, yet Cassian didn’t feel the same. The feeling wasn’t mutual. It felt like the end of something, alright, in that Bodhi Rook was more than right. But, it also felt like the start of something.

_Cry 'Havoc!' said he who fought chaos with chaos and let slip the dogs of war._

It wasn’t going to be the end. It would be a cold day in Hell when a mistake made by one of his friends would become his downfall. He was going to fight, not with the army (although having the army would be a great help) but with words. He would make deals, he would find new partners, this was the end of whatever deal he had with Kay Tuesso and anyone who thought that weed was a good source of income. The business was changing, they had to change with it. The weed had been kind to them five years ago, it was time to look forward. This wasn’t the end. This was the beginning of a new era. They would make it alive, or at least Cassian would make it alive. He would bring more prosperity in the years to come than the years before.

_Cry 'Havoc!' said he who fought chaos with chaos and let slip the dogs of war._

He had a plan. He wasn’t going to give up. He was going to war? So be it. The Americans wouldn’t touch him after his deals would be made. The Mexican government would not dare threaten him with the tapes of the interrogation of Bodhi Rook. The poor fool had spilled many secrets, perhaps hoping it could be Cassian’s downfall but the Godfather would twist them to his own interest. He would make the Mexican government finally listen to his demands. This wasn’t over. Fuck, it was far from over. Th is was a new beginning even if his other partners couldn’t see. But that’s why he was always there, wasn’t it? To see what others couldn’t see. Without him, the whole structure would fall apart. It was he who they needed.

_Cry 'Havoc!' said he who fought chaos with chaos and let slip the dogs of war._

He let the bottle down in the small coffee table and he looked at the fireplace one more time before standing up. He would show everyone that just a small mistake would it signify the end of everything. Sacrifices would have to be made, true. But those sacrifices would be justified. They would hurt him, of course. But in the end, it wasn’t his or the other’s survival that really mattered. It was his life’s work. It was the vast Empire he made. That was what truly mattered. Julius Caesar had made many mistakes, hell, invading England could be one of them. Yet, with his mistakes the Republic of Rome became a vast and unstoppable Empire. Cassian understood that. His survival didn’t matter as long as his empire survived History. As long as it was remembered through History.

_Cry 'Havoc!' said he who fought chaos with chaos and let slip the dogs of war._

The only flaw in his plan, in his logic was one that he couldn’t predict until it was too late. One that would later be the reference for another trafficker, only this time in Colombia.

He was going to war against a country which didn’t know how to forgive. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I saw Episode 9 and 10 all over again to make this have that feeling of hopelessness yet still a window of opportunity.
> 
> Let it be known that the chapters won’t be as long as this. I got carried away here a bit. I’m so sorry.


	2. 1977

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the army pillages Sinaloa, an ambitious pot trafficker pitches the impossible idea of making a drug empire in Guadalajara.

**Mexico City, Mexico**

**9th February, 2015**

**12:25 PM  
**

Handcuffs weren’t his thing; police officers—Army soldiers—holding his arms with such force wasn’t his thing; a convoy of the country’s best police force surrounding him wasn’t his thing; and publicity wasn’t his thing. But yet there he was, handcuffed both his hands and ankles to the convoy which was bulletproof and surrounded by soldiers with masks on their face and shiny big guns on their hands, gripping at them with menace at him. He looked at one of the men, he didn’t look at him back, although he doubted it was out of protocol. It was out of fear. 

The public announce had made all the world’s media go crazy, he had heard that as they translated him from place to place. All the eyes of the world, especially the eyes of his and the neighbor country, were on him today. The first time in what? Ten years? That the public would see him. Although his name was highly popular, very few knew him, apart of photos of decades ago; they all knew his father, albeit. And from what he heard, unless the president had some balls, he would be extradited to the U.S. He didn’t like that very much. He would have died than any prison in the U.S. but it wasn’t up to him, not anymore.

He looked back at his life and decided—he deemed—that destiny was to blame. His father, his uncle, everyone who ever loved him, was to blame. How could people expect him not to become what he was? All his life, the only thing he knew was trafficking. Sure, he was older than what the Mexico-U.S drug war, but still, that world was the only one he knew. How could he not? His “mistakes” had been the product of a very anti-Americanist uncle and his own hate towards the Americans. The only good thing he saw out of his arrest was that, hey, at least he had been caught in his country. If he was going to die, or get caught, it was in his homeland. 

They came to a stop and he could already hear the reporters, their shouts and their questions. Even his father hadn’t gotten this much publicity, this was another whole thing again. He looked at the same officer of the law who now returned the look before pointing the AK-47 to his face and his fellow officer grabbing him by the arms with such force that could be seen as police brutality. They took off the cuffs on his ankles and pushed him off the convoy. He squinted at the flashes of the media and was overwhelmed by the shouts. The police acted quickly, making him walk faster, no time to give him more publicity than needed—than wanted—.

But he caught the words of a media reporter looking at her camera. 

“Jerónimo Andor, known as “Güero”, leader of the Sinaloa cártel, responsible for the death of three Americans, trafficking drugs, murder, kidnapping and son of Cassian Andor, the infamous leader of the Guadalajara cártel, has been arrested...”

Jero almost scoffed at the woman but didn’t have the time. His father, the one who carried the most weight on his shoulders, the one that got captured in 1989 when he was barely twelve. His father, the big drug lord who fell in love with an American determined to see him fall, his father who was so cocky that money and power would save him, his father who at the end of his reign became insane. Cassian Andor. Jero was his shadow, always his shadow but he could hold his own, he made a name for himself, one that went farther than his father’s. Jero’s pride was left intact, he knew no matter who they arrested, this war would never end; his father started something bigger than anyone, he started something only God could stop.

Jerónimo Andor, with thirty-nine years of age, stepped through the door. He was only a mere smudge on his father’s story. But Jero had powerful allies, his game wasn’t done yet, they may have caught him but they weren’t going to hold him for much longer. He still had some fight left in him. He was going to teach them all he was worthy of his father’s name. 

This was far from over. 

* * *

_Let me tell you a story, be warned, this story doesn’t have a happy ending. Fuck. It doesn’t even have an ending at all. This is the story about how two governments (one more corrupt than the other) got together and decided to start a war. Although, not the kind of war you’re thinking of. The one with planes, media coverage and all that bullshit. No, this is the drug war._

_I can tell you how it began. Or at least, when the people involved noticed they were in it. Because, it’s easy to forget there’s a war going on when you don’t have it in your face twenty-four hours a day. But it’s real, very real. It’s a war that has taken 500,000 lives, and counting._

_So, no. I’m afraid I can’t tell you how this story ends because as of now, it doesn’t even seem to have an end. But I can tell you how the vision of a pot farmer would change how two countries interact with one another, and I can tell you how —out of ignorance and arrogance— this war started.  
_

_Believe or not, if you smoked pot in the late 70s, or if anyone you know smoked pot in the late 70s (don’t worry, now there’s laws that say it’s cool, I won’t arrest you, how could I?) the weed that made them see kittens in the sky was probably from the same place our story starts._

_Sinaloa._

_And it’s very highly that it was grown by the same guy that started the drug war._

_Cassian Andor.  
_

**Badiraguato, Sinaloa**

**12th March, 1977**

**10:14 AM**

The hills of Sinaloa, their mountains, the small rivers, they were a truly beautiful side of the state to see, the green of them gave a sort of freedom feeling to anyone that passed. It was a very peaceful place to live. And it was also a very difficult place to reach, very easy to hide something and fertile ground covered the same hills and mountains being hydrated by the small banks of rivers that crossed their paths.

Kay Tuesso knew more than anyone that those hills, those valleys that were almost impossible to find thanks to the vast territory that expanded from miles and miles, were usually the income for most of the poor farmers that didn’t get enough profit to save their hungry families from death. He knew that because his family had been in that spot, they were starving, they were poor and if they didn’t do anything, they would die. That’s why Kay and his father took on the business of growing marijuana. To save themselves.

Nowadays, Kay didn’t need any more saving. He wasn’t in the brink of dying, his father wasn’t in the brink of dying nor his family but what was taught for decades was not easily erased. Kay’s education had been limited to secondary, for he needed at the age of 16, to be the man of the house and provide his family. So, he stuck around Sinaloa and grew in the heavy hills of fertile ground, to grow marijuana. But in his free time, he saw a vision of what the agriculture industry could do with a plant like marijuana. He began experimenting with the help of his best friend, Cassian Andor.

As he passed the hills with his _Carabela Pantera 100_ (it was an old gift from his teacher years ago), with old ragged jeans covered in mud, brown boots, a white (covered in sweat) shirt, he thought of the day people would finally be apt to change. He had the vision, the great discovery of the year, and the only one knew that it had potential was Cassian. But Kay knew that if the third leg of the Golden Triangle wanted to thrive in the harsh and cruel world of trafficking, they had to change.

He stopped at the edge of a hill, almost near a cliff, his small motorcycle left in park as he approached the wooden porch of the house attached to a vast field. In his usual chair, next to a small girl, was the man that Kay needed. Of course, that didn’t mean that the man needed him — or wanted to see him. For what Kay made out of the look he gave him, it was best to say he was still bitter for all those years ago.

“Don Jorge!” Kay exclaimed, hoping to ease that bitterness in the old man’s face.

The man looked at Kay and smiled with big kindness though Kay wondered how much was that truth and how much was the lie. He wore the same ragged jeans although they were not covered in mud, a blue navy shirt with a jacket. Of course, we can’t forget the big cowboy hat that was given to him in 1933.

“How are things going on the land of the future, mijo?” Don Jorge, Kay’s teacher and Cassian’s uncle, exclaimed giving a good chuckle. Kay kept smiling even though he knew he was mocking him.

“Good, good, sir. It’s going great,” he replied. “Just remember, sir, that the future finds us all. We might as well change before it does.”

Don Jorge chuckled again, although this one sounded more like a snort than a laugh. “You’re beginning to sound like Cassian, or Kes. You young blood think you have all the answers for this business.”

“The future finds us all, Don Jorge,” Kay repeated. “Even here in Sinaloa.”

Don Jorge gestured to the small girl next to him. She was dressed in school uniform, her hair braided with pink buns, her backpack on her side and lunchbox on the ground. He smiled with pride, and Kay remembered from a long time ago, back when he had the same age of the girl, how Don Jorge looked at him with the same pride in his eyes.

“This is my new student,” he said, pride even leaking into his voice. “This is real new future.”

He turned to see her and gestured Kay. “This dumbass used to be my student but he got too influenced by my nephew about the whole future changing thing and became florist.”

“I just decided to experiment with the plant, and here in the field wouldn’t have been possible,” Kay tried to explain, trying so desperately to hold his dignity in hand. But Don Jorge had made it sound like he was just a hipster.

“Would you believe, princess, that this natural talent of a boy decided to join his best friend — my nephew — in his weird and unorthodox adventures?”

Kay bit his bottom lip as he shifted to see Don Jorge better and shield himself from the sun that gave the worst heat of all. He chuckled forcefully. “Say what you most Don Jorge, but your nephew never truly left us when he became the bodyguard of the governor. Didn’t you hear he resigned a while ago?”

Don Jorge ignored all that. In his hands, he held a marijuana stem, he passed it to the girl. “Look, Kay,” he said and then looked at the girl. “Is this ready to harvest, princess?”

The girl took the stem of weed and placed right under her nose as she smelled it. Then, with a frown she shook her head and gave it back to Don Jorge. “No, it’s still too early. Maybe in a week?”

Don Jorge smiled as big as he could and passed it to Kay.

Kay took it with skepticism and did the same as the girl. As he gave it back to Don Jorge, he nodded impressed. “She’s right, there’s still a week left,” he answered and gave a small chuckle to the girl.

“¿Ves? Eso sí es el futuro,” Don Jorge replied then shifted in his seat to look at his workers. “You heard that? One more week before harvest!”

_You see? That’s the future._

The workers —some looking a bit too worn out— nodded and shrugged back to their positions.

A woman (probably the mother of the girl) came out from the house, she looked at Don Jorge and Kay, shooting them a killer glare before turning her attention to the small girl. “What are you still doing here? It’s time for school!” She exclaimed. “Go on!”

Jorge chuckled. “You can go,” he said to the girl who gave him a kiss in the cheek, a small polite smile to Kay and began walking down the opposite way Kay came. That’s when Don Jorge put his full, undivided attention to Kay.

“And what did you came for here? You figured the city was too much for you?”

Badiraguato wasn’t much of a city, it wasn’t much of a town either. It was a small community of buildings thrown together. It was a municipality, or that’s what Kay heard Cassian say once. What Kay did know was that Badiraguato was extremely poor and lacked mostly everything. That’s why half of its population was linked to growing marijuana.

Sinaloa wasn’t much for the rest of the country either.

“No, I’m afraid not,” Kay sighed. “My batch —it needs to breathe, I’m hoping I can borrow an exhaust fan, you know, if you have one laying there.”

“¿Sigues con esa chingadera? Vamos, Kay, eres mejor que eso. Los plantíos necesitan el campo, no un invernadero en el patio de Cassian,” Jorge expressed his disappointment.

_You still work on that shit? Come on, Kay, you’re better than that. The plantings need the field, not a fucking greenhouse in Cassian’s backyard._

“The future will get—”

Kay stopped at the sound of vehicles. He yanked his head to the side, trying to find where the sound was coming from. He looked at the way the small girl had taken, she was still on his panoramic. And that’s when he also saw _them_. Military vehicles, coming in fast, the dust of the ground jumping around becoming a big cloud of dust. For what he saw, they were a lot and carried bigger guns than the ones Don Jorge had.

“Shit,” he muttered under his breath.

Don Jorge was already up, the woman of before was screaming for the girl to come back —which she was, in fact, she was running but the vehicles were faster than her, she wouldn’t make it—. Don Jorge was on his feet, running towards her, he looked back at Kay who was struggling to find his role in the chaos.

“Go, Kay! Go!” The old man exclaimed as he ran. “Tell everyone to ring the bell, go now!”

Thats when Kay’s intelligent brain finally began to function. As quickly as his own arms and legs began moving, he ran to his motorcycle and try to start it but was failing to do, he looked and saw how a soldier had just hit Don Jorge in the face. He tried once more and finally started. Without hesitating, he pressed the accelerator with force, turning just before one car got to him. He could still escape this, he could still tell the others about it. He could still hide.

As he thrusted the whole damn accelerator into his motorcycle and heard the shouts of the soldiers trying to get him, he couldn’t help but curse the damn government, the army and most of all, the Americans.

_Of course that not everything that shines it’s gold. And for the Army, the marijuana fields sure as hell didn’t shine but was gold anyways. When the Mexican government found out that some poor, bastards of farmers were getting rich off smuggling marijuana to the States, they couldn’t take it. They had to take action. Which of course, they did. And named it Operation Cóndor which was the whole code to invade Sinaloa without warning and burn every field they could get, arrest every trafficker they saw and show the Sinaloans who was boss._

_But military intervention never goes the way you want to. And usually backfires. Because, when talking about the traffickers. There was always going to be this one asshole, this one fucking smart and cunning asshole that would figure out how to make a crisis an opportunity._

Cassian had known, actually. Maybe he was one of the few people who knew the army would get and fuck them all over again. It was simply logic, he had heard them done it in Chihuahua and even Durango, it was just matter of time that they would also hit Sinaloa. He wasn’t glad at all, as he looked from the comfort of his seat in his car, how the military cars passed by, how the town was in total and utter chaos. He was parked right in front of a small business, just a restaurant he sure as hell knew didn’t have any links with the traffickers (unless giving them food was one) yet he witnessed first hand how the soldiers came trashed the place.

The system liked to take advantage of the poor, defenseless poor people that couldn’t help themselves. They could call it necessity, trying to end the problem by the root but Cassian called pure cruelty. It was such misery and crisis that was going on the town, people screaming, soldiers shouting, big black clouds of smoke around the city and the heat growing stronger with the fires.

He exhaled the smoke of his cigarette as he looked through the rearview and saw a familiar figure, he frowned as he placed his cigarette down. Suddenly, the old and shitty motorcycle that belonged to Kay passed through the street with a strenuous sound followed by four vans owned by the Army. Cassian sighed as he threw the cigarette of the window, he stretched and looked down to his shirt, then, his eyes shifted to his watch. He had sighed once more as he placed the keys into the ignition and started his car.

One hand took the siren and placed it over the roof of his car but didn’t turn it on. He began driving to the place everyone was running to and the place that Kay surely was going to. The only place that felt safe enough to hide from the army. The church. Most people believed that God was so powerful that the Army wouldn’t even dare try to charge a full assault into the holy doors. Even Kay —who sometimes doubted God’s plan— thought about that. But Cassian knew better. The Army was ruthless, they would blow them to Hell’s gate if they needed.

“Fuck,” he muttered as he drove. “Goddamn it, Kay, what did you get in trouble for?”

He fought the urge to turn back, leave Kay to be fed to the wolves, and go back to his house. He knew his house would be pilfered thanks to the greenhouse in his backyard. He knew they would make a mess of his home and he wanted to be sure that everything was going according to plan. But he didn’t turn back because it was Kay who they were going to take, it was his best friend, it was, in a way, his brother. He just had to trust that _she_ knew what was better and didn’t try to modify the plan.

He knew Badiraguato like the palm of his hand. It was his second home, he spent more time in Badiraguato than his actual home. Half of his family had been born in that small municipality and everyone knew Cassian Andor. He could make the Army see him as this charming, experienced cop. He knew how to twist his words and maybe get them to leave Kay alone. It would be difficult, indeed, but maybe with enough perseverance he could make the ever so cocky Army to give the small State cop a gift. A trafficker.

He turned right into the church’s yard and saw three trucks stationed and positioned themselves ready to shoot the doors open. He sighed as he grabbed the police hat, put on the sunglasses by the glove box, and got out the door about to do the show of the year.

He passed through the various soldiers, greeting them like they were old friends, like if the situation they were in was just a typical Monday morning, he saw the glances of pure confusion as he passed. He walked aloof from the tension of the situation, confident everything would turn out alright. He had it all under control. That’s the impression he gave them. He was in control.

The pushed through until he met with the commander in charge, he let himself a millisecond before patting the man on the shoulder like his old friend.

“Good morning, commander. Don’t worry, sir, I’ll get you the man you want. Kay Tuesso.”

He kept walking hoping the commander would let it slip. Which, of course, wasn’t the case at all.

“Hey, hey, wait a minute!” The man exclaimed. “Who the fuck are you?”

Cassian turned around, straightening his back, confident and a bit confused, almost like he wasn’t waiting the commander to not recognize him. “Who am I?”

The commander nodded.

Cassian allowed himself one small smirk. “Cassian Andor, state police, here to serve you.”

There were many lies on that simple statement, the uniform he wore was his but he hadn’t used it in nine months, the car was his as well but the siren should have been turned in to his superior, the gun he shone wasn’t registered, the plaque wasn’t valid anymore and he wasn’t a policeman anymore. Not in nine months.

“¿Y no te das cuenta que estamos en medio de un operativo?” The commander sneered showing the trucks and guns.

A_nd you are not aware we are in the middle of an operative?_

Cassian walked closer to the man and scoffed. The steps taken back by the commander weren’t lost to him. “It’s church, come on now, there are women there with kids. We don’t need so much chaos just to get one single asshole, don’t worry commander, I’ll do it. Everyone here knows me.”

That statement was true, however, everyone knew him not because he was a cop. In fact, everyone knew him just because of the opposite; everyone in Badiraguato—hell, everyone in Sinaloa—knew Cassian Andor was the son of major traffickers, was a corrupt cop who worked for the traffickers and, of course, was, in fact, a trafficker himself.

But the commander didn’t need to know those unworthy details.

The trick was to walk towards the church (and quickly) as he tried to convince the commander until he was already at the doors and it was too late for the man in charge to think it through. Which, thanks to a bit of luck, worked and before he knew it, Cassian made his way through the doors (firstly announcing his entrance).

The church was filled with women and kids like he had predicted. They were on their knees, shielding themselves with the church pews, there were some men but Cassian with a quick glance found the man he was looking for, right next to the father. It wasn’t even difficult not to stop him, he was sweaty and panting also, it helped that everyone turned around to see him when Cassian entered the church.

With speedy pace, the former cop grabbed the trafficker with such roughness that made his best friend give a small yelp of pain. Without a single word, he made him turn around in which he took off his cuffs from his belt and handcuffed him. He then proceeded to take out his gun and point it at his head which made everyone freeze and Cassian saw the genuine fear in Kay’s eyes.

“Play along, alright?” He spat. “I have a plan.”

Kay chuckled with difficult as they started to walk. “You always do.”

Cassian ignored that sarcastic remark and pointed at the father. “Si no es tanta molestia, padre ¿me puede abrir la puerta?”

_If it’s not much, father, can you open the door?_

The father got up immediately and nodded, with careful movement, and a quick prayer, he opened the door, looked at both sides and was relieved no one was shooting him. He got out of the way as Cassian with one hand on Kay’s arm pushing him and the other pointing the gun at his head got out.

Outside, giving a small glance at the surprised face of the commander, Cassian kicked Kay’s leg which made him fall on his knees with a pained grunt, the gun still pointing his head.

“There you have it; Kay Tuesso, one of the stupidest lackeys of Pedro Avilés, the biggest trafficker in Sinaloa,” he let a small moment of pride fill his voice. Then, he got closer to Kay with an imposing voice. “It’s over, _compa_, the government has brought the Army and you and those fields are long gone. Tell the man where they are.”

Kay panted. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.”

Cassian pulled his hair and with the handle of his gun hit him making Kay jerk forward groaning and coughing. The former cop didn’t even flinch. “Imma ask you again, where are the fields that have not been burned?”

“I don’t know!”

Another punch from the handle of the gun. Except this one was not on his throat rather his nose. With a bloodied nose and suffocating, Kay groaned.

“In the mountains! They’re in the mountains just a few miles down the river, sir!”

Cassian smiled satisfied as he looked at the impressed face of the commander who chuckled.

“Never met a state cop like you.”

Cassian took it as his opportunity. “What do you say, sir? Can I take this one with me?”

The commander didn’t pay much attention, already turning away from the scene. “Of course, we have much work left to do,” he faced his platoon. “Come on, we leave now!”

Cassian shot glance at Kay before pushing him towards the car.

* * *

“Okay,” Cassian took off his sunglasses and looked through the rear view mirror at Kay just when they parked in front of a house with the door opened. “You wait here and be careful with people seeing you.”

He didn’t want for an answer as he got out of the car and began walking slowly towards the house. Unlike his younger brother, Cassian had always been the meticulous and careful one, always been the timid one yet charming, he was always planning things in that insomniac mind of his. His hand went for his gun but didn’t dare take it out, he didn’t want to risk it. As he made it through the entrance and right into the living room, he took in the sight; all of the furniture was broken and upside down, frames that used to hang on the wall were shattered in the floor, the couch had been moved and left by the wall with its upsides down.

Worried, concern and something resembling panic ran through his chest as he kept walking and entering the kitchen which was an equal mess—all the house—was a mess, it was done with unnecessary cruelty and hate; he didn’t have the time to inspect the kitchen like he did with the living room as his panic grew stronger and the carefulness build up had been lost. He rushed outside to the backyard and stop in his tracks as he saw the greenhouse completely in rags, the pots and plants were all broken on the concrete floor, dirt covering the ground and the plastic sheets were ripped apart.

He ran to the small gas container and was glad to not see anything anormal. With a newly found courage, he knocked three times on the door. “Hey, it’s me.”

With effort, he got the latchet to open and immediately looked down.

”Uncle!”

Cassian smiled as an equally excited and relieved five years old Poe Dameron greeted him with open arms. “_Mijo_, how are you?” He breathed out as he pulled the kid out and into the backyard.

“They did come and twice,” Shara Bey spoke as she passed the rifle to him. “You’re either a genius or a lucky asshole. It was as if you planned it.”

“I’m afraid planning isn’t the same as guessing, dear.”

Shara gave him a playful smirk. In her arms, she held the only thing weakness that Cassian Andor would ever have; his _son_. A small, barely one year old baby boy who was gurgling in Shara’s arms. With a careful movement, Cassian felt the little weight of his son in his arms and felt his heartbeat begging to stabilize. His son, his little Jero. He pressed his small body into his chest and gave him a fond smile as he brought his index finger into the tiny palm of the baby’s hand.

“Está todo bien, mi Jero, papá ya espantó a esos hombres malos. Estás a salvo conmigo, siempre,” he whispered with the smile on his face.

_Everything’s fine, my Jero, dad scared off those bad men. You’re safe with me, always._

“How’s Kes?” Shara spoke once she got out of the compartment. Worry in her face for the well-being of her husband.

Cassian faced her. “Kes is fine, he got out before this started. He rang the bell and is safe and sound,” he then looked at Poe. “Did you protect your mom and nephew?”

The five years old looked down. “I tried but then I got scared.”

Cassian passed Jero back to Shara’s arms and knelt to be at the same level as Poe. He took his head in both his hands and gave him a kiss on his forehead.

“There’s nothing to be afraid, okay? You’re father scared the bad men, and I’m here to protect you and your mom. Always.”

_Poe Dameron, son of Shara Bey and Kes Dameron who was Cassian’s cousin and Don Jorge’s son. Shara Bey herself came from the old traffickers in Tijuana. Poe would grow up to be a known expert in the trafficking business, feared by some for his ruthlessness and desired by many for skills. He would be very close to Han Solo, another friend of Cassian’s and would learn to then master the ability of flying planes which would earn him the colloquial name “El Pajarito” the Little Bird._

_As we speak, Poe Dameron is a fugitive of the justice with five charges of trafficking, assassination, bribery and corruption; Kes Dameron is now dead and Shara Bey was arrested in 1995._

“Kay!” Poe ran to hug his other uncle (although Kay wasn’t related by blood unlike Cassian) who was handcuffed and all he could do was give the kid a small nod. “_Mijo_.”

Cassian sighed as he got up. “Didn’t I tell you to stay in the car?”

“The handcuffs are too tight, they’re hurting me.”

Cassian grabbed the key and took them off which immediately made Kay bring his wrists and massages them. He walked towards the greenhouse with a horrified expression on his face, he looked so lost, all his work was right in the floor. He couldn’t believe it.

“Look how they massacred my poor babies,” he breathed out. “Goddamn it.”

Shara whistled to bring Kay’s attention. “No se la llevaron toda, compa.”

_They didn’t take it all, Kay._

The farmer gave a confused and hopeful look at Cassian whom in return just gave him a smirk. He walked to the compartment and looked down and for his surprise and relief, he saw at least seven packs of his work. He laughed of joy.

“I’m always saying,” he looked at them both and even the small baby. “You guys are too smart for your own good. This will be enough! It’s more than enough!”

Cassian chuckled. “Take Jero and Poe inside, you have been out for far too long. In a few hours I’ll come back and we’ll go to the rendezvous point, okay?”

“Next time, I beg you not to hit me too hard. I swear I’m going to get bruises thanks to you, that’s police cruelty.”

“Come on now, don’t be a baby.”

Kay flipped him off as he took Jero and led Poe to inside leaving Cassian and Shara alone.

“I was going to give them all, or at least thought about it,” she admitted looking at the greenhouse. “Buy us time to get our stuff and move away.”

“But we have to do it _now_, or else things won’t never change, life will keep fucking us.”

“How are you holding up? It’s been ten months since she left.”

Cassian Andor used to have a wife, Jero’s mother. He married young and with inexperience. His obsession with growing up, evolving and becoming something more than just weed farmers corrupted his marriage to the point where, just two months after Jero’s birth, she left him with no notice and no trace. Instead of dwelling on the loss, Cassian took that as a sign to move forward with his plan of changing things. He only needed a window of opportunity and this was it. The departure of his wife convinced him things needed to change and they needed a radical change.

“I’m good,” he vaguely said before changing the subject to a much more important and present one. “Look, I know you and Kes have high stakes here and I would never ask you guys to risk anything that you don’t feel comfortable. So, just say the word and I will leave you guys out it, with no repercussions.”

Shara looked at him in the eyes. They’ve known each other since they were six, they were best friends and she was Cassian’s first kiss back when they were nine. She knew him better than anyone except his own brother. She saw a determination and a passion for his goal that she knew by asking him to stop, he would but it also break his heart.

“And that’s exactly why I can’t ask you that, I guess you ‘guessed’ that as well,” she sighed with mischief in her eyes. “Come on, we have to go.”

Cassian threw one last look at the past and with a smile, he moved forward.

* * *

**12th March, 1977**

**Calexico, California **

**11:45 AM**

“How are you feeling, Bodhi?”

Bodhi Rook shrugged nervously. He knew he would never be the person he was before. Not after what happened with Saw Gerrera. He had accepted that he would always be this nervous mess. It didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

“Better,” he spoke. “I know you asked me how I feel but—but I feel better, more in control of my thoughts.”

Dr. Mon Mothma smiled at him. “That’s good, can you difference between memories and reality?”

“More or less yeah, sometimes when I’m too tired I forget I’m on a _temporary_ leave and start panicking but then I snap out of it.”

“You haven’t done anything too stressful, right?”

Bodhi scoffed as he played with his hands. “Well, being a DEA agent is not stressful at all, or it wasn’t at first, I just do paperwork, that’s all.”

Mon Mothma frowned. “Does that bother you?”

“I know it’s for my well-being after, well what happened, but I know I can do much better than that. I know Galen would have not done what he did if he didn’t know I would be capable of going back. I—I know there’s a small chance I can go back but it’s just frustrating to sit around and do nothing.”

Mon Mothma sighed as she began writing stuff on her notepad. “You want to go back Mexico, right?”

Bodhi gave a dry smile. “Galen brought me here to keep me safe but he died trying to get those scumbags out of the streets. I own it to him—”

“Galen Erso was a drug trafficker, Bodhi, he worked with many associates in making creative transports for the product. Even with the tape confession, it would have never saved him,” Mon Mothma cleared it up.

“—but it would have redeemed him!” Bodhi exclaimed. His leg going up and down no longer by the nervousness of being totally broken inside. He was angry that they didn’t see. “He told me I could make it _right_, he told me I could make it right—all of it, if I was brave enough to listen to my heart.”

“Bodhi, you suffered extreme trauma when you went undercover inside Saw Gerrera’s operation. I don’t think you’re stable enough—well enough to be cleared for duty.”

Bodhi groaned on his seat, they had done the same monologue for the past ten months. He, begging her to give him his life back, and she telling him to be patient. “I have done all you asked me, I have taken my meds, I have visited you three days a week, I have abstained myself from stressful situations but come on, doc! It’s been far too long!”

“What you went through it’s not to be taken lightly, Mr Rook. You have been diagnosed with severe PTSD, depression, anxiety, mild paranoia—”

“Doc, let me be real honest with you,” he interrupted her. “I knew what I was doing when I signed up for the Drugs Enforcement Agency back when in ‘73, I have always suffered anxiety and depression and even small case of PTSD. But I can’t wait any longer!”

Mon Mothma knew Bodhi Rook well, she had observed him. She knew he had this determination to set things right. He was passionate in what he believed. She knew it would be better to send him on the field rather than keeping him down in Calexico. But Mexico? That was risky. Bodhi Rook spoke fluent Spanish but he suffered trauma back there, too. Mexico could be a trigger. Perhaps even worse.

But when she looked at those eyes, she saw Bail Organa and his feeling of duty to provide righteousness to the world.

She sighed. “I’m going to see, Bodhi. First let’s see the semantics and maybe, maybe I can talk to your superior officer in letting you start working on the field.”

It was like telling a kid Christmas would come early. “Seriously?”

“_But_, but you have to take it slow at first. And I can’t guarantee you a transfer to Mexico; but I can try.”

“I swear, doc, if I get a transfer to Mexico when I come back I’m coming here as a hero and it will all be thanks to you.”

She chuckled. “Calm down, Bodhi. Let’s forget that for a moment, we still have 45 minutes left from this session. But I don’t doubt that if you get a transfer to Mexico, you’ll get a medal for stopping the bad guys.”

Bodhi smiled shyly. “I guarantee you, doc, the next time you see me, I will be hailed as a hero,” he joked.

_DEA agent Bodhi Rook, known as “The Martyr” by many in the agency. I only met him once, it wasn’t a big meeting. Maybe two minutes in which he said hello and goodbye. But he was a good man, a determined agent who didn’t stop until he uncovered the truth. Many of his coworkers, his friends say he was one of a kind. Surely, he became the patron saint of the DEA, thanks to his horrible, gruesome death, the DEA is what it is now. He woke them up I guess. He showed them what the narcos were capable of doing. What their own government was capable of ignoring. When Bodhi Rook died, hell broke loose. Until this day, US-Mexico relations are tense thanks to him._

_Mon Mothma never saw Bodhi Rook alive after he left for Mexico, sure, she talked to him over the phone but never got to see him again. When he came back, he was indeed hailed as a hero, as a martyr. If you could say, she did see him one time. When they were bringing his casket with the American flag covering it. Don’t think she ever forgave herself for suggesting Guadalajara._

“Promise me something, Bodhi.”

“Whatever you need, ma’am.”

“Take it slowly, please for the love of all that’s holy, take it slowly.”

He smiled. “Now _that’s_ something I’m afraid I can’t promise.”

* * *

**12th March, ** **1977**

**Badiraguato, Sinaloa**

**12:15 PM**

He didn't want to laugh, seriously, he didn't. He knew that if the Army found the location, everyone, including him, was fucked but it was hard not to laugh; Sinaloa was a poor state, Badiraguato was even poorer, the houses were barely finished and most of them were falling down, and then, in top of a hill almost at the outsides of the municipality, a big mansion with a pool and all. Cassian couldn't help to laugh at how dumb his bosses were.

He went over his plan over and over again in his head. Trying to find a little flaw in his plan, one that could end up being the reason of his death; his boss wasn't very understanding, and what he was about to do, what he was about to ask, what he was about to propose was heavily risky. One wrong move and he knew it was over, his dream and his life would be over in a matter of seconds. But he saw that as being worth it.

“You're nervous?” Kay asked as they stopped in the middle of the front yard guarded by Ruescott Melshi.

“Yes.”

“Ah, but it's time, after this, you're going to have to buy yourself new clothes. At least you had the decency to change before coming here, imagine you in your police uniform in front of them.”

Cassian went over his plan again and again, he had to look weak, look like he didn’t have anything planned, then he would deliver the blow. If this failed, he was a dead man, Kay was a dead man, Kes was a dead man, his son would be an orphan. But if this succeeded, he would become the biggest trafficker in Mexico, he would be unstoppable and untouchable. He would have all the power he desired.

“You’re coming with me or not?”

Kay laughed at that stupid question. “No, that’s your part, I’m just the humble farmer. You’ll do great, Cass.”

With that, Cassian got out of the car, gave a small smile at Melshi and proceeded to enter the mansion. Again, he felt his bosses or who they were going to be his bosses, were pretty stupid to think the police wouldn’t see a big mansion in the middle of a poor municipality. They were outdated, thought of the business like it was the 40s, they didn’t want to change but change was imminent, he knew it and Kay knew it. It was better to change before life fucked you over and over again.

It wasn’t hard to see where they were meeting; it was in that big living room with a mini bar glued to it. He had been there multiple times, only as a security guard for Avilés, never participated it in the meetings. He could hear the angry shouts of the Lion of the Hill, he could hear his illogical shouts and curses to his partners. It was not difficult to follow; he was angry the fields had either been burned or captured, he was angry none of his men stayed and died there, protecting them and he was angry no one fucking told him the Army would do such raid.

It was Sinaloa, what did he expect?

“Fucking six months, don’t fucking kid me! Did we actually fucking lose everything and now six months of work are fucking gone!” He heard Pedro shout.

“We lost it all, that’s the thing. All the fields are gone. Maybe one or two remain _stable_. But most of them are gone,” Don Jorge, Cassian’s uncle, hoarsely said.

“Where the fuck were you to not have protected my field?!”

“He lost his eye, Pedro,” that was Baze Malbus. Cassian knew him, or could say he was an acquaintance, to be honest, he had worked with him more times he liked.

There was a pause in which Pedro closed his eyes to not curse forty words in one minute. He sighed and then looked at everyone else in the room, not Cassian, he was in the background, listening to their petty disagreements and gathering information.

“I thank Jorge for his sacrifice but you, fuckers?” He spat at the whole room. “I see most of you here with one goddamn eye.”

Everyone except Cassian looked down. He did so, in sign of respect but doubted anyone was paying attention to him.

“Any of you go to Durango, buy us whatever he’s got. And then, you guys are going to replant my whole fucking fields, understood?!”

Everyone whispered in agreement and that’s when Cassian saw opportunity.

He moved with agility through the people. And he cleared his throat. “Perdóneme, patrón pero si me deja, yo tengo una solución para todos nuestros problemas.”

_Excuse me, boss but if you let me, I have a solution for all our problems._

Everyone looked at him and a few tensed up. Cassian looked around and saw how most of them eyed him with certain disgust. He didn’t find Chirrut Îmwe in the crowd, it meant Baze thought this was too risky for him to attend; it was a good sign. They were desperate and they were in need of salvation.

“Be careful, Pedro. This guy was the personal babysitter of the governor. Maybe he sold us right now,” Baze’s tone was almost a feral growl.

It was met by a scoff. “He’s the governor of Sinaloa, Baze. Do you really think people tell him shit? Have you forgotten Jorge is my uncle, or that Kes is my cousin?”

“Good point,” he heard his cousin remarked and decided to ignore it.

“With all due respect, if we keep planting and replanting we’ll end up even more screwed. The Army will come and fuck us up again and then we’ll repeat the same thing over again. Things won’t change at all. What we have to do is start all over again—”

Whispers began spreading.

“—somewhere they won’t dare send us the Army. Let’s be honest, they can fuck us up because we’re from Sinaloa. They don’t care about us here. We have to go somewhere they can’t send us the Army. We have to go to Guadalajara.”

Baze scoffed. His scoff was more like a growl than a scoff but held that sardonic laugh of his.

“We’re nobodies there.”

“We’re nobodies here too, Baze,” Cassian didn’t even bother to look at the old trafficker, he didn’t need the distraction. He kept looking at Avilés. “The Army invades us and no one talks about it, why would they? This is Sinaloa, no one gives a fuck. But _there_, in Guadalajara, there is different. There’s big businesses, fancy people, _Americans_, I would like to see how the government would send the Army and have no one talk about it.”

He didn’t need logic on his side, although he had it, he didn’t need it right now. He had tact, he knew how to talk to people, how to make them see what he saw. Pedro didn’t have the vision, Cassian had, he didn’t see the bigger picture, none of them did; no one saw the scale of the ambitious dream he held on the palm of his hands. They didn’t need to, they just need to cooperate.

“¿Qué sabe este cabrón? No es traficante, es un pinche policía,” Baze’s voice boomed with a touch of annoyance and mockery.

_What does this fucker know? He isn’t a trafficker, he’s a fucking cop._

Cassian finally looked at him with a controlled anger; he didn’t like when people reminded he used to be a cop. He didn’t like when they looked down on him. As if he was their inferior. “Ex-policía.”

_Ex-cop._

Baze laughed and soon others joined him. “That’s even worse!”

Cassian glared at them. A silence but deathly glare.

Pedro regained the attention of the crew but Cassian knew he had gained his attention.

“The Naranjo brothers control Guadalajara, it will be risky.”

“For fuck’s sake, Pedro. Those assholes are protected by the DFS, they won’t let us enter their territory just like that!”

Cassian hid a smirk under his lips as he heard Malbus complained even more.

_Cassian had planned how everything would go down. He had planned down to an art. Sleepless nights and chaotic days went into the single opportunity for growth and change. The DFS which stood for “Dirección Federal de Seguridad” in Spanish was basically the CIA. They were as ruthless as the traffickers but had a police plaque to justify it. The Naranjo had been the first traffickers to make a deal with them for protection, it meant those fuckers were untouchable and Guadalajara was their city. Baze Malbus and the others knew that well; Cassian Andor had to be fucking nuts to try and take it._

_What they seemed to forget was Cassian’s brother; Salvador Nava.  
_

“I say it’s the only way but however you seem fit, boss,” Cassian looked down and indifferent. “You, sir, was who invented the game, the great Lion of Sinaloa, those fools would be out of their minds if they don’t negotiate with you.”

“Don’t be a fucking idiot, Pedro.”

That seemed to touch a nerve but Cassian saw his mind had been made. “No one calls me a fucking idiot,” he looked at the ex-cop with some sort of disdain and impressed. “Go to Guadalajara, make a deal with them. But if you can’t, then I hope you know the consequences of your actions.”

He smiled. “That’s all I need to know, of course, I need someone to accompany me, you know, sir, to lend me some credibility.”

Baze laughed at that. “Right on.”

“Who you have in mind?” Pedro asked.

“Baze would do fine, sir.”

All the money in the world wouldn’t replace the satisfaction Cassian Andor felt when he saw Baze Malbus’s stupid grin fall off his face as those words left his mouth.

Pedro nodded. “Alright then, take him.”

“To Guadalajara, then,” Cassian smiled at Baze. And very quietly, as a whisper to himself. “To the future.”

_Experts say Pablo Escobar was the guy who invented the game; the big shot who made a fortune in the coke business. They compare him to Copernicus because he was the first to see that the product didn’t revolve around the markets rather the markets revolved around the product; if that was right then Cassian Andor would be the Julius Caesar of the game. He made an Empire out of different traffickers, he made the first drug cártel in Mexico and he ran the game for years before he got captured._

_Even now, with him behind the bars, with most of his associates either dead or in jail, the consequences of his actions are still present in every-day Mexico. The man started a drug war which has no end, which has killed hundreds of people. Not even him knew what he was building, what legacy he was leaving. Nothing could ever stop it, the Empire he had created would be there long after he was gone. The audacity of his fucking plan couldn’t even be stopped by the creator._

_Neither Cassian Andor or Bodhi Rook knew what they were helping built. And would never had believed it._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fine, I get excited and write a lot. don’t judge me. 
> 
> And the goddamn trailer!?! By now I’m an expert on what happened after 1985 and I know with detail what’s going to follow but I’m still excited about how they’re gonna portray it. Especially how arrogant and untouchable Félix thought he was, just to be reminded he was one of the bunch.
> 
> I love how they actually referenced the Roman Empire in the trailer and how Félix himself compared himself to Julius Caesar.
> 
> If you squint and read between the lines, you have the identity of the narrator.


	3. Guadalajara, Jalisco

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Guadalajara, the home of mariachi and tequila. Or if you’re drug dealer, the home of the trafficker dressed as a cop.  
Guadalajara, perfect place to start a drug empire...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And if you thought I forgot Bruce Springsteen and his albums. YOU WERE WRONG HERE IT COMES BABY
> 
> AND I DONT CARE IF BORN IN THE USA WAS RELEASED IN 1984 SOME SONGS WILL APPEAR BEFORE THEN? OKAY THANK YOU
> 
> (Also, it’s gonna be two months since I quit smoking and I’m lowkey proud of myself for that)

**24th April, 2017**

**Santa Elena, Chihuahua**

**5:47** **PM**

“When I started in this business, I was young, _really_ young. My father was a trafficker and so was my mom, my uncle was the biggest drug lord, it wasn’t a life I’m sure my parents would’ve wanted for me but it wasn’t like they did anything to stop that.”

“When did you get really into the business?”

“I was, around fifteen or sixteen, perhaps even fourteen when my uncle decide that I was more useful elsewhere than with my parents. My dad send me with Salvador Nava, my other uncle who helped Solo in Ojinaga. Chava was a good guy, a really comedic guy, he was a good friend.”

Poe Dameron looked at the reporter, the nerd who held an old tape recorder, was around thirty years old, perhaps even less. The _gringo _was really interested in what the fugitive had to say. Poe, in his forty-five years of experience in the business and in life, thought the reporter was either going to die or he was going to help him get the record straight.

“Can you tell me who your uncle is?” The reporter asked.

Poe shrugged. “Cassian Andor, my uncle is Cassian Andor. My parents were Shara Bey and Kes Dameron. And my mentor and good friend was Salvador Nava. All of those names bring fear into people’s mind but most of them are either captured or dead.”

“What do you think of the escape that your cousin made a few months ago? Have you contacted him?”

Poe took a minute to take in the information. If he answered the reporter’s question he surely would die. “I can’t elaborate if I’ve seen him or not. But good for him that he escaped. He is a good man, unlike others—unlike his own father, he never sold anyone to the feds to buy himself time.”

The reporter stopped the recording all the sudden. His glasses looked too big for his eyes and face, he was sweating thanks to the heatwave and looked more nervous than anyone should. “Are you sure about this? I—I mean, this interview and all, you’ve been wanted by the authorities for more than two decades.”

Poe looked at the reporter, took a deep breath and sighed. “When I was eighteen, I was arrested at the border for carrying 12 ounces of coke duck taped to my torso. I was pretty stupid but it was just my second crossing. And I had no money on me, I was going to die there and my life would be done. But then, then Chava comes and takes his wallet and gets me out. He saved my life that day and told me ‘it’s going to be a cold day in hell when you get killed for stupid 12 ounces—”

He stopped as he heard the blades of helicopters outside. The reporter heard them as well. Poe got up immediately and went to the window, his men already getting up and pointing their guns at the helicopters closing in. The reporter squeaked as he got his tape recorder. 

“What’s happening?”

Poe scoffed as got away from the window stupefied. “Pinche Güero,” he whispered as he grabbed his gun and stormed out. He looked at the helicopters getting closer and closer. “¡Vete a la chingada, Jerónimo Andor! ¡Tú y tú pinche padre! ¡No me van agarras así de fácil!”

_Fucking Güero. Go fuck yourself, Jerónimo Andor! You and your fucking father! You won’t catch me without a fight!_

What did he expect from the son of the biggest backstabber in the world? Still, Poe couldn’t help but feeling angry, hurt and betrayed. He had been sold by his own cousin. What could he say? Like father like son. Once an asshole, always an asshole. But he was also to blame.

He should’ve known better. You can’t leave the business _alive_.

* * *

_Salvador Nava, born as Salvador Tenoch Andor Nava, was a former police officer trained by the CIA and later became a DFS agent. The trafficker dressed as a cop. His nickname was “The Cop” once Uncle Sam realized he had played them all along. He had a charming personality but he was a fucking psycho. __He was smart as hell, smarter than what he looked. His charming and aloof personality gained him the trust of many and his confidence made him good friends. Unlike his brother who distanced himself from people, Salvador was a man of the people. He gave them money, he was a Saint in Sinaloa._ _He was loved by many and hated by some. But untouchable in a way._

_His strength was his people, the ones he had given back. If he would’ve wanted, he could’ve had usurped the power of his brother. But he was too loyal for that; he was a man of honor, of loyalty and of his word. Salvador Nava was a bandit to the end of his life. He had a saying “I live and die with my honor and pride intact, like a real bandit.”_

**13th March, 1977**

**Guadalajara, Jalisco**

**11:30 AM**

“Chava!”

“Chava!”

Salvador Nava, known as Chava, was sleeping in his desk as he heard someone call him. He was too sleepy to answer.

“For fuck’s sake, Chava! Wake the fuck off!”

He jolted at the touch of something clearly cold and then realized that his comrades had thrown him ice from the ice machine. Of course, Chava gave out a yelp and stood up immediately.

“Fucking assholes!” He shouted as he tried to shake his clothes from the cold. “You could’ve just said it a little bit louder.”

One of his friends laughed. “El director te quiere ver, te tiene algo especial sobre los hermanos.”

_The director wants to see you, he has something special about the brothers._

“And that’s reason to go and throw ice at me?” Chava asked as he grabbed his gun. “No, that’s fucking police brutality.”

“Just go, Zocato, and stop sleeping so fucking late!”

Chava gave them the middle finger as he walked away. He put on his jacket and tried to shake the sleepiness off him. Everyone by now knew who were the brothers, what was Chava real job and they also knew how much disgust the director had towards him. And it was equally mutual. He held respects to his boss but he knew that the director would always see him as a low life trafficker trying to be a cop. He didn’t mind that at all. But he knew someone else that did.

He walked to the office, still sleepy and exhausted by the perks of having to run a drug trafficking ring. The Director was talking on the phone with someone, Chava waited at the entrance, looking at all the fancy stuff that his 'partner' owned. There was a deer head from when he went with the Secretary of Defense to Washington, and other stuff that for Chava was useless. Finally, after talking about some anti-communist things, the director Krennic hang up.

“Salvador, come in,” he spoke in a dry tone. “One of your men found out some of your _people_ are coming this way.”

Chava tried not to roll his eyes. His people. That meant traffickers. But of course, the great Director of the DFS couldn’t be linked to the drug trade.

“From where?” The Commander asked.

“Sinaloa. Perhaps you know those people.”

Chava frowned. “What business would they have in Guadalajara? They know who runs the business. They’re not welcome here.”

Orson Krennic shrugged. Almost nonchalant to the subject. Which was to be understood, Salvador Nava was the one in charge of that underworld, Krennic was in charge of the noble side of things. Chava knew Krennic disliked him for many things, the most special was his admiration for Che Guevara and Fidel Castro and his shared idealism but also because Chava was left-handed and not right-handed.

Because yeah, Chava chose to write with his left hand just to spite the Director.

“They’re probably going to meet up with the brothers, as if I care. You know what you need to do, give them protection or whatever,” Krennic sighed. “You also need to visit our old friends in the DEA office. Just to check in.”

“Seems like a busy afternoon, sir.”

“Is that a problem, Commander Nava?”

“If it was, I would immediately tell you, sir, you know I’m not one to stay quiet when something bothers me,” Chava answered with a pinch of superiority, fake superiority.

“Be careful with your mouth, commander. One of these days, someone will be truly offended by your comments and you’ll end up unmarked grave.”

“Like Pancho Villa?”

“Like a bandit, Nava,” Krennic stated.

Chava shrugged aloof at the comment his boss said. “Well, at least I would die like a bandit with honor. Like Jesús Malverde.”

“Just go and find out who the Hell is meeting with the brothers, and remember,” Krennic made a pause to look at Chava right in the eye. “You work for the DFS and not the traffickers, your job is to protect the interests of this community, understood?”

“Cómo siempre, Director.”

_Like always, director._

Krennic placed his concentration elsewhere and Chava knew the conversation was over. He didn’t waste a second, he turned around and knew exactly where he was going and exactly who he was seeing. And as he walked through the halls feeling the eyes filled with envy of his fellow colleagues, he couldn’t help but wonder why would Pedro Avilés try and talk to the competition; Chava knew about the burnt fields, had heard it would touch Sinaloa but he felt there was more to it than just asking for help. His intuition sparked curiosity in him to see how the situation would unfold, and who was the man behind such plan.

And how he could benefit from it.

* * *

**12:45 PM**

“Out of all the fucking dumb ideas you two assholes have ever had, this one, I swear to God, is the stupidest one,” Baze Malbus’s voice boomed in the car as he complained.

“Is this all you’re going to do? Complain? We’ve been in this car for three hours and either you sleep or complain,” Kay stated with a sardonic remark.

“Well, I’m sorry, butterfly, but it seems your friend hasn’t calculated the risks of doing such thing as this. And I am not going to risk my life for an fucking cop who doesn’t know jackshit about the business!”

“Ex-cop,” Cassian corrected.

Baze, who sat in the passenger seat next to the driver, looked at Cassian with an expression between the lines of incredulous and anger. For him, Cassian was only a kid, a dumb kid who thought that just because he had a small garden outside his house, he could be a trafficker.

“It’s seems you two, dumbasses, haven’t gotten over the stakes of this small crusade you have here. Let me help you with that,” Baze took a deep breath. “The Naranjo brothers are the competition, they don’t give a shit about Pedro and they don’t give a shit about you. All you’re going to achieve is your friend and I see you make a fool of yourself in front of them.”

“Is that right?” Cassian asked with a smile on his face as he shook the ash of his cigarette through the window.

“And if you make Pedro seem weak, foolish or embarrass him as well? Then, you’re good as dead. You see? Nothing good comes from being the bitch of your boss,” he then proceeded to look at the backseat. “Eso también va para ti, corazón.”

_That goes goes for you too, sweetie._

Kay only gave him the middle finger.

Cassian laughed, as the years would pass he would find himself laughing less and less, and looked through his sunglasses at Baze Malbus. “Calm down, old man, we’re not even there yet and you already have our caskets ready and all. Have some faith me. I have a plan.”

“I doubt you truly have one; all I’m going to do in Guadalajara is take a mini vacation and see how you dig your own grave, that’s all.”

“Let’s put some music, shall we?” Kay squeaked. “Any music.”

Cassian nodded and turned on the radio forgetting he had his own mixtape in it. Suddenly, the car was boomed by rock music. The drums, the electric guitar and a harmonica. The singer was painfully obviously American. Baze gave a weird look at Cassian and muttered something along the lines of “...not only stupid but has a bad taste in music” while Cassian lit up like a kid on Christmas as he heard the music play.

_Cassian Andor was a big fan of Bruce Springsteen, he first heard his songs back in 1974, when he made it over Tijuana which was heavily influenced by the Americans. He spend many nights dancing to his songs; Cassian spoke not much English but learned the lyrics by heart. Springsteen never came to Mexico while he was free but Cassian’s dream was to hear him play. He put songs all the time, every time he could. Or at least he did in the beginning, he stopped playing music after 1985. _ _He had a wall full of records and perhaps the thing he loved more than Jyn Erso was his records._

_He’s the reason I can’t listen to the Boss without thinking of him. And I hate that, with all my heart._

“Ese, para que veas, ruco, es Bruce Springsteen, el más cabrón músico en los United,” Cassian pointed out as he smiled while lip-syncing the song. “No se de que madres está cantando pero me la aprendí y se la voy a enseñar a Jero algún día.”

_That, so you see, old man, is Bruce Springsteen. The most amazing musician in USA. I don’t fucking know what the hell he’s singing about but I learned it all and I’m gonna show it to Jero one day._

Baze scoffed. “Aren’t you the kid who proposed to his girlfriend with a Juan Gabriel song?”

Kay laughed. “And it was fitting, the song surely talked about how fucking broke he was.”

Cassian glared at them.

Baze sighed as he placed his seat to take a nap. “Anyways, whatever. I don’t care. You can sing your gringo music all you want. Take in the panoramic, it might be the last time you see it,” he placed his hat under his eyes.

Kay got as closed as Cassian as he could without disturbing the big soldier that was Baze and he whispered. “Don’t worry. Your plan doesn’t have much room for error. I know it.”

Cassian had already went through the plan forty hundred times in his head. He was panicking inside and he was probably going to throw up but he kept in check his emotions. He nodded nonchalantly as he concentrated on the dessert road. He looked at the panoramic and realized how beautiful Mexico was. How lucky he was to be in that Mexico at that exact time. He knew some people wished to be in his place, just to experience the panoramic.

Kay, himself, unable to read Cassian thanks to his stone cold face. Threw himself at the backseats and decided to look out of the window as he replayed on his mind his part out of the plan. The car was silent apart from the Bruce Springsteen songs. Cassian took a deep breath.

“Swear I lost everything I ever loved or feared,” Cassian badly sang quietly. “I was the cosmic kid in full cosmic dress.”

It had to work. It _had_ to. He was going to do what no one had ever done. He was going to make history. All those days of being looked like an insect, of being an insignificant human and being forgettable were going to end. Soon enough, they were gonna see how important he was, how much they needed him. He was going to make history and unlike his predecessors, his legacy would surely outlive him. His son, would have a good life, a rich life. His son would be greater than Cassian could ever be. His son would have all he never even dreamed off, he would not be in the business, he would have a better life.

_Ooh...Growin' up_

* * *

**Calexico, California**

**1:10 PM**

“You did what?”

“Come on, Jyn. It’s not too bad what I asked. It’s what I am owned,” Bodhi tried to assimilate with his best friend, Jyn Erso as he locked the door of their apartment.

“You asked your therapist to recommend your boss to translate you to Mexico, how is that not bad?” Jyn contradicted.

Bodhi shook his head and threw the keys to the plate next to the entrance. “I told her to think about me coming back to the DEA,” he paused. “And yeah, perhaps, I told her that if she could get me to go back to Mexico, it would be great.”

“What did you do that for? You know that’s dangerous! You haven’t been there for what? Thirteen years?! Twenty?”

“Jyn, you know more than anyone that the drug problem is getting worse. President Carter thought legislation was a good thing but we both know that unless those scumbags get what they deserve, it won’t change. And it wasn’t that long.”

Jyn Erso, daughter of Galen and Lyra Erso, adoptive daughter of Saw Gerrera and product of the drug trade, sighed. “And you think you’re gonna get down there and arrest all the bad guys? You, alone?”

“For Galen, and for you, I would try my hardest.”

Jyn sighed as she put her stuff down, after being away from a week, she was exhausted but her worry about Bodhi overdrove her exhaustion. “Bodhi, you suffered a trauma—”

“—God, not the same monologue.”

“—and it takes time to recover,” Jyn frowned when Bodhi interrupted her. “Look, Mexico is a beautiful country but you and I are marked. It would be your death sentence if you decide to go there.”

Bodhi sighed as he ran his hand through his hair. “Jyn, it’s not like I’m being transferred as of right now, I am not even cleared for work here in the States. It was just a suggestion, nothing else. And knowing the DEA, I won’t probably even be cleared for duty.”

“Would that be too bad? Just leave the drug trade alone? Live our lives and move on?”

“You know I can’t do that, not when I was given another opportunity. If we have a chance to put those scumbags where they deserve to be, I will take the chance.”

Jyn walked towards him. He looked defeated. His hair was growing and so was his beard, and although he was thirty years old, some gray hairs were beginning to pop. His eyes were kind and soft, he tried to look angry at her but failed. The big bags under his eyes demonstrated that he barely slept, his anxious twitches meant he still in the road of recovery but his sole determination proved he could do much more than what he was assigned to.

Jyn didn’t want to lose him the way he lose her father. That determination was too familiar to her, the same determination her father had before he was killed. Jyn was afraid of that passion. She didn’t want to lose Bodhi as well.

She caressed his cheek, let him know that he wasn’t alone even though he felt like it. They had grown together. They were basically brother and sister. “You’re a good person, Bodhi. But our family has a tragic story with good people. And I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Bodhi smiled, trying to reassure her. He took her small hands into his and shook his head. “I won’t probably get cleared. Perhaps you’re right, it’s time we move on,” he then pressed a kiss on her forehead. “It’s very unlikely I will go to Mexico. Don’t worry, Jyn. You’ll have me for many years. We’re gonna grow old together and you’re gonna get tired of me.”

“I will age better though.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that.”

_There was only two people that mattered to Jyn Erso before she met Andor. And those people were her father and Bodhi. She lost both of them, and want to know the worst part? Both of them were killed by the same person, Cassian Andor. And although Andor held incredible respect for Galen, he knew the scientist was wrong, once you’re in the business you can’t leave it. And though he never really knew Bodhi, he tried to convince himself that killing him wasn’t a mistake._

_Galen Erso had tried to warn Cassian before it was too late, leave the business. Bodhi Rook tried to warn him before it was too late, to let him go. Andor didn’t listen to both of them and paid with his liberty._

_But Erso? She lost her father and brother to the person she fell in love with. Now, that’s gotta hurt. _  
  
“Come on, we gotta eat, I made sandwiches.”

Bodhi barked a laugh. “And you didn’t burn them? I’m surprised.”

“Oh, fuck off, Rook!” She gave him the middle finger.

* * *

**2:45 PM**

The place they decided to meet was the big Hotel Americas owned by the Naranjo brothers, it made sense, they were the competition like Baze said. It wasn’t the place Cassian would’ve liked to be, too many tourists, it was a goddamn hotel, but it wasn’t his decision. In fact, he felt it wasn’t even the brothers’s decision. It was someone else. The brothers wouldn’t have cared if the meeting was in a hotel full of civilians or in the middle of the fucking desert. Someone else decided that a hotel was the most neutral ground one could get.

Cassian was almost sure of who was that person.

After dropping Kay at the entrance of the university and booking rooms to stay, there wasn’t much to do than just wait until those assholes showed up. Cassian decided—more like followed Baze—to sit down in the mini bar. He ordered a drink and lit up a cigarette, looking at his glass pondering on his plan for the hundredth time in twenty minutes, he was knew the margin for error was minimal but even Cassian Andor couldn’t prepare for everything. He glanced at Baze who looked extremely bored as he was already on his second glass. Slightly confused at why Kay wasn’t there but still extremely uncaring to what would happen to those two kids.

Baze looked at the ex-cop that was Cassian Andor. He was a kid in his eyes, still remembered him back when he was barely a child who helped his father with the fields. Cassian’s father was a good man, he did what he did for his sons, his mother—although gone too soon—had always been respectful towards Chirrut and he. Baze knew Cassian’s younger brother, an hyperactive kid who talked too much but was as smart as his brother. Baze didn’t know much of Salvador, didn’t know what was of him after he left Badiraguato years ago.

Although he was younger than Baze, Cassian looked exhausted to Baze’s criteria. He didn’t know if it was because of his son, the stupid plan or because his wife left him. Perhaps all them. Baze had seen his wife around, never spoke to her, Chirrut had. For what he told him, she was a nice woman, hardworking and loved Cassian a lot. And Cassian was head over heels for her. But Cassian’s true work wasn’t law enforcement and his real work scared her. She left him.

Baze didn’t blame her, the business wasn’t for everyone. He doubted it was for Cassian as well. He didn’t belong with the traffickers, he was a cop; maybe he didn’t belong with the cops either.

It didn’t matter for Baze. Cassian Andor was still a stupid man if he thought he could convince the competition to share the territory just because Sinaloa was a fucking dump. Perhaps that was his grief over losing his wife, he was about to commit suicide by making Pedro look weak and embarrass himself in front of the brothers.

As on cue, Hernan Naranjo bursted in the room. Cassian didn’t show any kind of emotion yet thought it was quite arrogant of him not to show himself with some people around, perhaps he thought that Cassian would not dare to make an attempt on his life when he was on the brothers territory. Something Cassian hated: to be underestimated.

Hernan didn’t have a sense of dressing, that was sure, he thought he was the fucking best why wearing a bright orange suit with a stupid haircut that screamed he was trying too hard. He was also as arrogant as they came and sat down with incredible nonchalant attitude and quite some superiority.

“Baze, didn’t know you were gonna visit,” Hernan said without elaborating. And sat down.

“It was an unplanned trip, I’m here to babysit this guy,” he pointed at Cassian.

Cassian could already see the arrogant superiority Hernan thought he had, the trafficker saw Cassian like an insect, a speck, nothing significant. Cassian didn’t say anything, instead, he looked anywhere else but from the corner of his eyes, he saw Hernan with a small smile.

“I’ve heard of the raids in Sinaloa, many people got their houses destroyed and not to forget the fields that were burned. Such tragedy,” even the tone was fake. But then he cruelly added. “But to kill the rats you have to go where they live, right?”

Cassian clenched his jaw but still didn’t dare to look in the eye at the trafficker. He knew better than to let his pride get the better of him. Instead, it was Baze who answered, trying to sound as neutral as possible but even his words were strained with the need to punch that orange.

“Yeah, yeah, I guess,” he muttered and took a drink from his glass. “Well, anyways, as I told you, I’m here babysitting this guy. He had a proposal to make.”

Hernan scoffed. “A proposal, well, that’s great! Let’s hear it, shall we?”

Perhaps Baze thought that by some miracle Cassian could convince Hernan Naranjo to share the territory with the _rats_ of Sinaloa. But Andor already knew that it was not going to be possible—he knew all along, Hernan was not the man he wanted to meet. Hernan was nothing without a person. And that was the person Cassian wanted to meet. But, for the sake of the plan and underestimating, he tried to explain the concept of the proposal.

Now, he dared to look at him in the eye.

“After what happened in Sinaloa, an opportunity came up for our organization, to become a—a _society_,” odd choice of words but Cassian couldn’t think what word could be the definition of various plazas working for one man.

“Ay, ¿una sociedad? pues ya me interesa,” Hernan smiled with a stupid, fake interest.

_A society? Well, I’m hooked._

Cassian clenched his jaw even more. He glanced at Baze who just looked painfully bored and pitiful towards him. Cassian didn’t like to be underestimated. But he needed to sell his part.

“It would be really easy, we would grow it and well, transport it. And all you guys have to do is give us the protection of the DFS. And we’ll split the profits 50-50.”

“Your operations would be in Guadalajara, right?”

“Yes.”

Hernan smiled once more before looking at Baze, who chugged on his glass before he could answer. Then, he looked at Cassian. For him, that unknown stupid asshole, looked to uncomfortable and his eyes had the desire—the believe that Hernan would say yes. He was truly stupid.

“I, too have a proposal. How about instead of 50-50, we split the profits into 70-30 or 80-20? Nah, I have one better 90-10,” he laughed. But then a serious and quite scary expression formed in his face. “This is my last offer, you don’t get shit, you get the fuck away from my city and don’t even fucking come back again. Partners?”

Baze sighed as he put his glass down. Cassian did nothing, he remained calm but there was a new spark in his eyes, one that seemed angry or at least insulted.

Hernan scoffed again. “Can you believe this stupidness? How about you guys give us your beautiful women and we forgive you for all shit? Yeah, okay,” he got up with a smirk in his lips. “Tell Pedro he can fuck himself, and all his rats.”

“¿Sabes qué? Te tengo otra propuesta,” Cassian got up, and with a quick move of his hand, before Hernan could fully turn around, he shot the man on the head. As he fell and the tourists ran, Cassian dared shoot him once more—just out of anger.

_You know what? I have another proposal._

Baze, who was already up, hit Cassian with a napkin while looking at the body of Hernan Naranjo, stupefied and scared. He looked at Cassian with his hands trembling and pointed him with hate and anger. “What the fuck is wrong with you?! Do you have any fucking idea of what you just did, asshole?!”

Cassian simply shrugged as he sat back. He took a drink and then answered Baze. “I convinced him, didn’t I?”

Baze gave him the middle finger, still shocked and confused but angry at the fucking ex-cop. “This place will be filled by cops. What kind of cops, you ask? His and his brother!” He pointed at the body. “And they’ll take us to be tortured and then killed!”

Cassian didn’t answer. Baze had had enough. He grabbed his jacket, took another drink and directed one last word to Cassian Andor.

“You and your fucking plan can go to hell! I’m getting the fuck out of here!”

Cassian didn’t even look at him. He nodded and lit up a cigarette.

* * *

**3:15 PM**

“You know, you guys are my favorite gringos, always so generous and,” Chava motioned to his glass. “Have a great taste in liquor!”

“How many gringos do you know, Chava?” Leia Organa inquired playfully as she took a bite out of some bread.

“Touché there, Organa but you know me, even if I knew all the United States of America, you would always be my good friends!”

“Are you sure it isn’t because we offer to buy you a drink every time you visit?” Luke Skywalker joked.

_Luke Skywalker & Leia Organa. Those names are really important, so don’t forget them. Back then, they were two of the three agents in Guadalajara. They were siblings, their father had been an undercover FBI agent in his time, so, they were like the stars of the DEA back then. Luke was very outgoing, an easy friend who trusted more than he should, and he was really impulsive and quick to act. Leia was the opposite, she was strict and not easy to be friends with, she thought of all the moves before making hers._

_Luke was gay which was evident but had never officially said it. Leia fell in love with Solo. Which made a problem in its own. But both Luke and Leia were good friends of Salvador, and would usually drink in the Camelot. Salvador liked them but his true goal was always to find out what they were up to. Which was easy when Leia wasn’t around, considering that Luke with two beers was drunk enough to spill the work they were on.  
_

“Well, perhaps,” Chava answered. “But who cares? In the end, you guys are my favorite gringos!”

“Sure, sure,” Leia muttered and she glanced at the four men sitting in a three meter radius from where Chava sat. “Still can’t believe how a DFS agent of your rank decides to drink with us.”

Chava looked at his second-in-command, Danilo. He gave him a quick nod which meant he should disperse a bit more. Then, his attention went back to Leia. He laughed. “I never pay attention to our ranks, Leia. We’re humans in the end.”

Luke took another drink out of his glass, and already feeling a bit tipsy, he a sensitive comment. “And that’s why you shouldn’t had tried to kill yourself.”

He didn’t. Chava had never tried to kill himself, he loved life too much for that but his cover was one of a poor, miserable agent with a shitty life who needed friends. He wasn’t much of an alcoholic either, he drank every now and then but not to a point of going drink to his work. The cuts that Luke had took a glance a few weeks ago and referred to a suicide attempt, were really just scars of trying to erase the red star of the Che Guevara but failing to do so. A stupid mistake but helped to create his alibi even more.

“Luke!” Leia chastised him.

Chava sighed with slight discomfort. “It’s okay, Leia. He’s right. That was stupid from my part. But I’m better now, don’t worry,” he gave a comforting smile. “Now, I see you two more tired than usual, what’s going on in the headquarters of the weed building?”

“Ah, the same old bullshit,” Luke answered with a dismissive move of his hands. “This morning came a report of the same shit, drugs coming in to the United States and Washington pressuring us to capture the Naranjo brothers.”

“No offense, Chava. But the police here is full of shit, most of them are either corrupt or lazy. And we know for a fact that the city is helping those traffickers with protection. We just don’t know how high it goes. We need to find the man who helps those bastards and controls the whole fucking police force in this entire state!” Luke got carried away.

“Stop drinking, you’re drunk,” Leia took his glass away. “I beg of you, Salvador, to not tell anyone about this. Luke doesn’t have a filter. And if word gets out that we’re trying to find who sells the police’s protection, someone might tell and fuck it up.”

_You’re looking at him, _Chava thought internally as he smiled and shook his head. “Of course not. You know I’m one of the few who believes that this city has a corrupted system.”

“Thank—”

“Excuse me, patrón, but you have a call,” Danilo approached Chava and pointed at the bartender with a phone in his hand. Chava looked at Danilo but the agent looked at him back with urgency.

“Excuse, I have to take this,” Chava excused himself and walked towards the bartender with a slightly sour mood. “Commander Nava.”

“_There was a shooting in Hotel Americas, sir_,” the other line spoke.

“What?” Chava exclaimed. The hotel was the one he told Hernan to set the meeting, it was neutral ground and full of tourists, no one would’ve dared to shoot there. Unless Hernan’s temper exploded. He was already groaning knowing the result and the paperwork he would have to do.

“_Hernan Naranjo was killed, sir._”

Chava’s eyes almost left their sockets, he grabbed the phone with such force that the veins popped. He was about to yell when he remembered Luke and Leia. So. He did the worst thing he could do than yell. He whispered with such anger and shock. “What do you mean that Hernan Naranjo was killed?! Who killed him?!”

“_We don’t know yet, sir, the shooting was a few minutes ago. We don’t know if they have fled the scene_.”

Everyone knew that angering Salvador Nava was something that was never good. The last time someone angered him, he was shot. You had to try not to anger a fucking psychopath. But it was too late.

“Then what the fuck are you doing calling me?! Arrest them!! I want no one to leave this fucking city! Understand?! Find the people responsible!! And kill them! Kill them where they stand!” He hang up.

He sighed as he ran his hand through his hair and pinched the bridge between his eyes. Hernin would be furious when he’ll find out, which meant he would need of Chava, and if they killed Hernan, everything would change. Hernin would ask for more protection and that would not sit well with Krennic. Not to add the fucking DEA who would be up his ass.

“Everything’s okay?” Leia’s voice brought him back. “You seemed stressed, and what problem would stress a DFS agent?” She tried to joke at the end.

He sighed as he approached the two siblings, he could go back and talk to them, his people would take care of the people responsible of the murder of Hernan. He took a drink out of his glass. “I’m sorry, something came up. I have to go,” he was getting his wallet.

“Don’t worry, go,” Leia shook her head.

“Thanks!” He was already out of the door. Danilo followed him. “I’m going to the warehouse outside the city, I need you to contact Hernin fifteen minutes after I leave.” Chava ordered.

“And Director Krennic?”

“I’ll deal with him separately, just do what you’re told,” he snarled. Oh, he was more than furious. He was raging. He would gladly put a fucking drill in the sockets of who dared shoot Hernan.

* * *

**4:20 PM**

Baze knew something was going when they pulled to a halt in a warehouse with a bunch of windmills surrounding them. He knew something was wrong when they pulled him out of the car simultaneously as Cassian and Kay. He looked at Kay who looked slightly confused, then he shot a glance to Andor who was scanning the buildings with an unnerving movement of his index finger. The DFS agents who had apprehended them lead them to the inside of the warehouse. As Baze entered, he saw the lines of weed hanging from the ceiling and the packs stacked.

Cassian was next to him and was frowning. Baze wanted to punch him but his own fear was winning. He wasn’t sure what was going through Cassian’s mind as he scanned the room but his lips moved once and formed the shape of an ‘J’.

From the shadows, came a man. The man was wearing blue navy jeans, a matching shirt and a black leather jacket. His hair was turning gray and his beard was black, he looked extremely tired—even more tired than Cassian, if possible. He was smoking and threw the bud to the ground. He was angry but when he came into the light and saw Cassian, that anger for a second became shock and then came back to its original expression.

Baze recognized him from somewhere, he didn’t remember where.

“Buenas tardes,” the man greeted them with a kind and polite tone as he glanced towards all of them.

_Evening_

A awkward pause was made in which the three culprits realized that the man was expecting an answer back. A muttering of “good evening” and “good day” was heard through their lips as they looked extremely uncomfortable.

The man looked at the DFS agent who arrested Kay. He seemed annoyed and hurried all the sudden. “Who are your friends?”

The DFS agent pointed at Cassian solely. “This guy is the one who saved your mother a two years ago, I thought you would’ve liked to see him.”

The man shot a killer glare at Cassian and then smiled at the DFS agent. “That’s a great idea, only one problem,” his smile dropped. “My mother has been dead for more than a decade, you dumb fuck!”

“I’m here to give you a proposal,” Cassian’s hurried speech interrupted the silence.

“I’ve heard of your meeting with Hernan Naranjo. It didn’t go too well, it seemed.”

“This proposal was never for them,” Cassian shook his head. “It’s only for you, commander. It’s in the bag my friend had when arrested.”

The DFS agent who had been reprimanded for his actions was the one who was holding the bag as well. It was a stupid, little girl bag with rainbows in it and tainted pink. When he opened it, he found a pack of weed.

“This is the future, commander,” Cassian explained. “That’s our last batch. It’s way more efficient than your stuff.”

“I am not part of this,” Baze interjected. “I have never been a part of this, I’m not with them. Just to make that clear.”

The man seemed even more annoyed as he inspected the pack. “Chucho! Bring me one of our packs!” He ordered as he kept looking at the other one. A man brought him another one, bigger in size but with the same weight. The question on his face was enough for Cassian to make his move again.

“It weights the same doesn’t it? Kay, can you explain?”

Kay, who seemed more nervous than his other three companions, snapped out of his anxiety and began explaining like he had rehearsed for the last twenty-four hours. “Well, you see, all plants are living things, even marijuana but unlike animals or even us, they don’t need to have necessarily a partner to reproduce. So, um, the trick was to separate the female and the male. Because the thing you hold in your hand,” he pointed at the bigger pack. “That’s the result of their reproduction and well, you can’t smoke that shit.”

The man was suddenly interested in what Kay had to say.

“And well, this way, it’s way quicker and well, cost less and leaves more room,” Cassian added. “I’m looking for a partner, I’ll split the profits 50-50.”

“How do you call it?” The man asked.

Kay looked at Cassian panicked and Cassian looked at him back with urgency. “I guess, um, seedless weed.”

The man gave a humorless laugh. But before conversation could continue. Hernin Naranjo came storming in with his gun pointed directly at Cassian and two other lackeys following him. He was raging, and put his gun five centimeters away from Cassian’s nose. He didn’t flinch when the other Naranjo pointed it so violently. He stood his ground and looked at the commander with some desperation.

“What the fuck are these assholes doing alive?!” Hernin exclaimed. “This asshole,” he didn’t part eyes with Cassian. “Killed my brother and he still lives? No, this ends now!” He took the safety off.

“Hernin, lower your firearm,” the commander said calmly.

Hernin didn’t move.

“For fuck’s sake! I said lower it!”

Another two seconds passed where Cassian Andor saw his whole life flashed in front of his eyes. He thought that many his plan had failed and he was going to die there, he wouldn’t see his son again, he wouldn’t see him grow. And he wouldn’t be able to build his empire.

But then, the brother lowered his gun and snarled at the commander. “Kill them where they stand or I’ll have you killed as well.”

The man looked disappointed and quite frankly, he frowned as he took his own gun and put the safety off. He seemed apologetic towards the three people. “I’m so sorry, gentleman but I have to protect the interests of my partner,” he pointed the gun at Baze. “But also my director,” he added and with a quick flash, the gun’s handle pointed at Hernin and before the man could react, the bullet was already in his skull.

The body fell with a silent thump and the other two men ran off. The commander gave a look at two DFS agents who ran towards them.

“Salvador,” Baze breathed finally recognizing the commander. That was Salvador, Cassian’s little brother.

Salvador Nava pointed the gun at a man he had known for decades. “Didn’t you tell me that you weren’t part of this?”

Cassian saw the actual seriousness in the threat Salvador made and immediately stepped up for Baze. “No, wait, wait, he’s with us, he just likes to fuck around.”

Salvador lowered his gun. “Alright then,” he looked at Cassian and then he started laughing. Laughing like a kid who was just told a stupid joke. “Pinche cabrón, me hiciste el día imposible.”

_Fucking asshole, you made my day impossible._

“All part of the proposal,” Cassian gave a little smile.

“I expect my money every month, okay? I don’t care if you’re my brother. But we all answer to someone. But I take this seedless shit will take time to grow, right?” He looked at Kay.

“Ey.”

“Well then, the first month is curtesy of the Naranjo, never liked them. Fucking assholes,” he extended his hand to Cassian. “Partners?”

Cassian took it.

_The Guadalajara cártel was formed of four partners. Kay Tuesso who was in charge of the production and transport of the product; Baze Malbus who was in charge of the financials and ran the money for the cártel; Salvador Nava who was in charge of security and provided the all the protection that the DFS has. And watching all that from above, the man who came up with the plan, Cassian Andor. The first ever cártel, formed by multiple plazas that wanted to kill each other before, and after. You had to give it to Andor, he had a dream that seemed impossible by everyone’s standards, and some-fucking-how he got enemies to work together for a single goal; his success._

_But no high lasts forever._

* * *

**6:45 PM**

Baze didn’t know how he had come to where he was. His day had been a goddamn rollercoaster and he was still confused and amazed at how everything ended up being. They had survived an encounter with one of the most important men in the country who was Cassian’s little brother. Baze could almost remember when Chava came crying to Chirrut because he had a nightmare about his mom. He shook the thought as Kay parked the car in a small hill which extended to the desert. When Cassian and Kay got out, he did as well, still confused at the thought of all it.

“This? This is where we’re gonna plant it? It’s a fucking desert.”

“Indeed but, there’s hidden water under it. It’s just a matter of finding where,” Kay commented.

“Did you learn that with your florist arrangements?” Baze snarked.

Kay smiled. “Of course,” he walked towards the immense field that would become _Rancho Búfalo_.

That left Cassian and Baze alone. The older man couldn’t help but start asking questions. “Is it true? That shit about the seedless weed?”

“Indeed it is,” Cassian answered with a hidden smile as he walked slowly. “That’s his biggest achievement, his baby.”

Baze scoffed stupefied. “Then that means he’s a fucking genius,” then he paused. “That’s why you brought him, isn’t it?”

Cassian said nothing.

“You knew your brother was the commander, didn’t you? You knew that such proposal would have never been accepted by the Naranjo but you didn’t need them, if you had your brother,” Baze wondered.

Cassian chuckled. “Now it seems you and I are starting to understand each other, Baze Malbus.”

“And Avilés? What do you think he would do of this?” Baze asked.

Andor shrugged with indifference. “How would he react to becoming the most important drug trafficker in Mexico? He’ll react great. He’s not one to look at the bigger picture.”

Baze looked at Cassian Andor with a look that would become only his look. He didn’t know at the time, but Cassian was a man who had spend decades of his life waiting for that exact moment, he would be an innovator whom plans brought extreme wealth, Cassian Andor was someone that had control over most anything. No one would truly know his capacities. Or how far he would go to take what he wanted. Baze Malbus would make the biggest mistake of his life; trust Cassian Andor.

“Why me? What do I have to offer?”

“I have a plan.”

“A plan? That I know. Somehow your fucking crazy logic makes sense. Perhaps, you know more about the business than I thought.”

Cassian looked at the horizon. He could almost see it. He would indisputable, he would be indispensable, he would be the biggest trafficker in the history of the world. He would make all those people that looked down to him, bow to him. He would take all that he wanted and more. He would become so indispensable to anyone that no one could ever replace him. He was going to become the Boss of Bosses. The man who unified the plazas to work all for him. He could see, he could see his future. He wasn’t going to run a business—he was going to run an empire. An empire that would outlive him and everyone he knew. His legacy.

“What do you know about the Roman Empire?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What I love about the beginnings of the chapters is that you’ll see how the old traffickers’ actions affected the new generation. And you’ll see in the end, Cassian’s story is Jero’s. 
> 
> DID I WRITE TOO MUCH OF COURSE BUT I DONT GIVE A FUCK AND YOU DONT EITHER
> 
> I waited a month after the last season because that season fucked me up. First of all, I love how we see the motif of how Félix is always, no matter where and when or even wit who, alone. He pushed away everyone he loved and everything he by cared and he ended up completely alone. His empire fell not because of the DEA but because of his own ambitions. ALSO, I didn’t expect to be so emotionally attached to Pablo Acosta and his death fucked me up. It fucked me up so bad.
> 
> Also, have you guys figured out who’s the narrator?


End file.
